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7 



"^r BENCH PRINCIPLES, 



SEEN THROUGH 



AMERIC AN/SPECT ACLES 

" Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite." 




LnssiNC-BaRFi 



NEW Y O R K 



JIARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

329 & 331 PEARL STREET, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

18.12. 




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand 
eight hundred and fifty-two, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District 
of New York. 






PREFACE. 



" Simul et jucunda et idonea dicere vitae." 

I WISH to take off my hat to my reader. A French 
bow would be more graceful, but it will take more time, 
and a greater flourish. I prefer to make his acquaint- 
ance with the plain but sincere Yankee nod. In bidding 
him good morning, I have only to say, that if he read 
these pages, he will find some truths frankly told, and 
some opinions frankly expressed. I have admired Paris, 
the Magnificent, but I have also inquired its cost. I 
have asked why Republicanism was a curse in France, 
and a blessing in America. In short, having some leis- 
ure hours during the past winter, I employed them in 
not only examining the outer world of this modern 
Athens, but in endeavoring to solve its inner life. The 
result is the following chapters ; abruptly various, and 
full of contrasts like their topic. I commenced my notes 
for my own amusement. I publish them without being 
asked for two reasons ; firstly, to tell the friendly public 
what I can make known to them in no other way, and 
secondly, because I have the curiosity, vanity if you 
please, to try my hand at making a book. Having 
brought you, gentle reader, to the threshold of my apart- 
ment, your courtesy will not allow you to do less, for my 
hospitality, than to take off your hat also, and walk in. 

Paris, June 1. 1852. 




SECTION OF A PARISIAN HOTTSE. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS 

AND 

FRENCH PRINCIPLES 



CHAPTER I. 



SUNDRIES. 



The different manner in which the Anglo American and the 
Gaul build their family nests, is pointedly brought home to the 
former the night of his arrival at Paris. We live in perpendicular 
strata ; they in horizontal. Our houses stand side by side, each 
like a tub on its own bottom. Theirs, so far as they relate to 
families, are spread one upon the other, like a pile of gingerbread. 
With the exception of the principal hotels, and a few recently 
constructed in the English mode, Parisian houses are arranged 
after the following fashion. In general, they form a hoUoAV 
square, allowing a court-yard of sufficient size for a carriage to 
turn. This shape admits of two ranges of apartments, equivalent 
in accommodations to houses with us ; the one facing the street, 
the other the court-yard, the kitchen and other conveniences 
being the two cf nnecting arms. Houses thus constructed accom- 
modate two families on each floor, and are from five to nine 
stories high. The ground floor is devoted to shops, stables, and 
he porter's quarters. It is entered by a huge " porte cochere," 



10 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



which is always guarded by the family of the concierge, who acts 
as agent for the proprietors in letting their apartments, and 
watches all the outgoings and incomings of the mansion. Each 
range has its wide circular staircase for the gentry, leading as 
high up as what was once considered the only abode of genius ; 
and another — small, dark, and narroAv, like the worm of a ram- 
rod — for the use of domestics. 

The porter must be on the ''qui vive'' at all hours of the 
twenty-four, to slip back the bolt of the outer door, by means of 
a string connecting with his office, upon the warning ring or cry, 
" Le cordon, s'il vous plait." Those who enter after midnight, 
bestow a trifling gratuity upon this Argus, to compensate him for 
his disturbed slumbers. He replies to all questions relating to 
his charge, pays postages, receives and distributes all letters and 
parcels that have owners within his domain, uses your fuel as if 
it were his own, and is always ready to do the amiable — for a 
consideration. 

The floor above the entrance is called the " entresol," being, 
as its name indicates, between sun and earth, and it is generally 
inaccessible to the former, at any season of the year, except in 
the widest streets or avenues. Being low, it rents low, compared 
with the floor above, which forms the apartment Number 1, in 
height, finish, and decoration, and is, consequently, much the 
dearest. They then progressively decline in price each story, and 
also in quality, until they terminate under the roof in a series of 
little chambers, for the servants of the mansion, two or more of 
these rooms belonging to each apartment. 

The apartments themselves are of every variety and size, to 
meet the wants of the diversified positions of the inhabitants of 
this metropolis. Some are of sufficient grandeur and sumptuous- 
ness to rival the interior of the more pretending hotels, while 
others dwindle to the means of the most economical bachelor or 
money-saving grisette. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FB,ENCH PRINCIPLES. 11 

This mode of building has some prominent advantages over 
ours. Externally the houses are more uniform, of greater size, 
and being built of a soft gray sandstone, admit of more architect- 
ural ornament. They economize also in ground-room and mate- 
rial, consequently in rent. All the rooms of a family being on 
one floor, much of that stair-work of which our ladies complain, 
is saved. In enumerating these advantages, I have enumerated 
all, unless it may be considered one to be able to bring together 
the different branches of a family under one roof. 

Their disadvantages are more palpable. Each floor having its 
separate kitchen and drains, contributes its quota to an assem- 
blage of odors, based upon the fragrance of shops or stables 
beneath, which, in spite of locks and bolts, penetrate with an 
impartial distribution into every room. This nuisance is not 
always perceptible, but it is a daily liability ; and the plain truth 
is, that there are few of these gregarious habitations that do not 
give offense to sensitive nostrils more than once during every 
twenty-four hours. This fact has doubtless some relation to the 
enormous consumption of perfumery, which, not unfrequently in 
the street, overpowers all other smells, as the scented individual 
goes by. 

Again, no amount of cleanliness in one story can always be 
proof against a want of neatness in the next. If one family cooks 
onions, the neighbors above and below are brought into un- 
mistakable cognizance of the fact. If there be a frolic overhead, 
the family beneath participate in the noise, without the fun. 
There lived in the apartment below me a young lady who, for 
five months, with scarcely the intermission of a day, practiced on 
the piano, from four o'clock until midnight, and often until two 
o'clock in the morning. She played and sang delightfully, or 
otherwise I should have wished myself deaf In a city where 
revolutions have become as periodical and necessary as measles, 
chicken-pox, and the hooping-cough to childhood, this species of 



V2 P_^JSIAN SIGHTS AND FE>ENCH PRINCIPLES. 

family roosting has inconveniences sometimes of a graver nature. 
A few shots fired on the 4th of December last, upon the soldiers, 
from the upper stories of some houses on the Boulevards, caused 
a return of ball, grape and musket shot, which lasted an hour, 
broke in their fronts, riddled them in every part ; the inmates 
escaping as they could. One individual has it in his power to 
compromise a hundred lives. 

Although this multiplying of families under one roof may be 
considered as a species of architectural communism, it is very far 
from being a social one. 'No one knows his neighbor. There is 
no door-plate on the several landings, to satisfy curiosity as to 
who is to be found within. Somehow or other, the occupants 
never seem to meet on the common stairway. Of the seven 

families beside my own that occupied No. — of Rue de , foi 

six months, I knew nothing except that one was English, and 
another Russian. I could not have distinguished a single mem- 
ber of them all from a casual visitor. It is said that tw^o friends 
lived for a year in the same house without being aware of the 
fact, until they accidentally met in the street, and inquired each 
other's address. An amusing mistake occurred to a friend of 
mine : He started to call upon a lady with whom he was inti- 
mate; after reaching her house, not having taken sufficient 
notice of the flights of stairs he had ascended, he entered an 
apartment in the story above, believing himself to be in that of 
his acquaintance. He found the plate all out, and a display of 
refreshments, indicating expected company. As his friend did 
not then receive, he thought this a little strange, but gave it no 
further consideration, and, with a liberty which his relations 
with the family warranted, helped himself to bon-bons and fruit. 
He soon heard a lady's voice, which he supposed was his friend's, 
calling from her chamber, the door of which was partly open, 
apologizing for not coming out immediately ; to which he replied, 
" Do not disturb yourself Madame, I pray you. I will wait.'' 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FIIE>X'H PRINCIPLES. 13 

He had scarcely uttered these words, when she entered the room, 
and, to his consternation, he found himself in the presence of an 
utter stranger. She looked equally amazed, as she had supposed 
it was a gentleman she was expecting. " Madame," said he, 

" is not this the apartment of Monsieur ?" " No ; that is 

on the floor below." " Then, Madame, I have to throw myself 
at your feet for this intrusion ; thinking myself in the apartment 

of Madame , I have been eating freely of your refreshments, 

and can now only oiler the humblest of apologies. I am M. 

de ." The name was one well known in Parisian society, 

but he says the lady looked but half convinced, and followed 
him to the door, keeping one eye on her plate, and the other on 
him. He afterward met her in the apartment below, and they 
had a hearty laugh over their mutual surprise. It is unneces- 
sary to add that by this system, duke and laborer, countess and 
lorette, saint and vagabond ; the great, good, bad, and indifferent ; 
w^ealth and poverty are often brought together under the same 
roof, alike unknowing and unknown. 

The apartments usually taken by strangers, for limited periods, 
are let furnished with every necessary for housekeeping, except 
linen and silver, which are hired separately. Inventories are 
taken on entering and leaving ; the lodger being responsible for 
all damage, other than ordinary wear and tear. These inven- 
tories embrace a list of existing damages, including grease and 
other spots on carpets, table-cloths, cracks or fractures in the 
glass or porcelain, all minutely detailed, as well as injuries to the 
furniture, &c. If any are added, they are to be paid for accord- 
ing to the tariff of the landlord, which is not of the most liberal 
character. 

French kitchens are more like a ship's caboose in size, than 
the domains of an American cook. What room there is, is 
mainly occupied by numerous little grates, raised upon a brick 
platform, and adapted in size to the various copper, " casserolles," 



14 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

or saucepans, so necessary for the preparation of the indispensable 
" entremets,'' of French cookery. A Yankee cook would be as 
much at a loss in one of these kitchens, as she would over a 
locomotive. One half of the ingenuities of our American furnish- 
ing warehouses, would be equally as inexplicable to a French 
housekeeper. A good broom is not to be found in Paris. Car- 
pets have been introduced into the apartments rented to English 
and Americans, but the French make but comparatively little 
use of them, preferring the waxed oak floors, which are cooler 
and cleaner, but require no little care, at first, for a stranger to 
preserve his equilibrium. The French use much less fuel than 
we, warming themselves more by extra clothing and foot-muffs, 
than by lires. 

The search for apartments, which to a novice is a matter of 
amusement, soon becomes a fatiguing and embarrassing employ- 
ment. He is ushered without ceremony into any which are 
taken for a short tirhe, without regard to the convenience of the 
occupiers; led through disordered bedrooms, unarranged cabinets, 
and ushered into all the privacy of family matters, lucky for his 
and their modesty, if among the scattered articles of toilet, he 
does not pounce upon some fair one in matutinal dishabille. At 
first, I hesitated upon these domestic thresholds, but the uncere- 
monious " Enter, Sir," soon convinced me that the right of the 
landlord to exhibit his apartments, was superior to any considera- 
tions of delicacy. It was amusing to contrast the coolness and 
indifTerence with which French tenants underwent this scrutiny, 
often saying a word in favor of the lodgings or landlord, and 
always frankly courteous ; whereas, with English or Americans, 
one was evidently looked upon as an intruder into their temporary 
castles, from room to room of which the ladies — like quails seek- 
ing cover — dodged about, to avoid meeting a man more fright- 
ened than they were themselves. 

Investigations in the unoccupied apartments are of course 



PARISIAN SIGHTS A^^D FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 15 

pursued under more favorable auspices. But, to believe tbe as- 
siduous porters, there was not one that had a single fault, or want- 
ed a single comfort, or even luxury. All of any pretensions had 
just been vacated by Russian princesses, or English " milords." 
One proprietor, after a pompous eulogium on the merits of a 
spacious apartment, whose faded gilt furniture and tawdry 
splendor, seemed to have descended untouched and almost un- 
dusted, from the days of Louis XV., said, as a climax, "The 

Princess has just been to look at them, and was perfectly 

charmed; she wished to take them at once." "Pray why did 
you not secure so noble a tenant ?" " Because she could not 
deposit the required security for rent," was the reply. Having 
just seen in the paper the arrest by the police of a Greek prince, 
for forgery, I came to the conclusion that the title " prince" was 
no better security for contracts or morals in Europe, than " col- 
onel," in the United States. 1?y 

After ascending and descending, in the course of a month, per- 
haps a thousand pair of slippery stairs, and repeating the same 
questions, until the thorax is pretty much in the condition of 
that of Maelzel's automaton baby, whose language was restrict- 
ed to " Mamma" " Papa," according as the right or left arm was 
lifted, the lodging hunter growing desperate, affixes his signature 
to a paper, promising to pay from 10 Of to 120 Of per month, in 
advance. In consideration of this sum, he finds himself, in one 
case out of two, in the possession of an apartment, in the inven- 
tory of which no mention had been made of smoky chimneys, 
and various facilities for the circulation of cold air, or odors M^hich 
savor not of Araby the Blest, but which have now become his 
heritage for the period stipulated in the contract. 

In a city like Paris where every domestic want can be sup- 
plied almost as it were impromptu, house-keeping is divested of 
the greater number of inconveniences and vexations attendant 
upon it in the United States. Labor of any character is at instant 



16 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PRINCIPLES. 




command, paid for as soon as completed, and the transaction 
ended. The sole responsibility of the housekeeper, provided she 
has made a good selection of domestics, is to give her orders and 
examine her accounts. Families that intend to make a length- 
ened stay in Paris, if they would consult comfort and conven- 
ience, should proceed at once to housekeeping, but, for a short 
period, the restaurant- 
life is preferable, as 
affording an insight 
into French manners 
and cookery to be ob- 
tained in no other 
way. Besides, one 
meets with, not un- 
frequently, spicy and 
agreeable interludes 
arising from the mis- 
takes and embarass- 

(. . AT VERY's. 

ments ot novices. 

Very's, Trois Freres Provenfaux, and Vefour's have a world- 
wide reputation, or, at all events, one co-extensive with the 

love of good 
eating, and 
wherever the 
words gour- 
mand and 
" gourmet" 
are still un- 
derstood in 
their legiti- 
mate signifi- 
cation. These 






|M 




AT VEFOUR'S. 



are the places 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



to test the renown of French culinary art, and the depths of 
your purse. But one meets mostly strangers at these places. To 
see the French eat one should visit the restaurants of lesser mag- 
nitude and fame, particularly of a Sunday, where the rush to 
dinner, as no one dines that day under his own roof, is absolutely 
fearful to a lover of a quiet meal. Infants, dogs, and nurses, all 
have a seat that day, and the amount consumed would indicate 
considerable preparatory fasting. Eating and drinking, for the 
moment, becomes the only business of life. The preparations be- 
speak the seriousness of the operation. A family enters, consisting 
of father, mother, maiden sister, two children under five years of 
age, and a dog. All the tables are filled. They turn to go out. 
The restaurateur rushes forward, intercepts their retreat, and 
promises a table " toutsuite." He sees one party have called for 
their bills, hands them their change, and plumps the new comers 
into their warm seats, with an array of broken bread, dirty glasses 
and all the debris of the previous meal before them. Once seated, 
with bonnets and hats hung up, they are corwidered as secure as 
fish fairly hooked. The "gar9on," with a dexterity and rapidity 
peculiarly his own, whisks away the soiled table-cloth and dishes, 
and in an instant has replaced them with snow-white linen and 
porcelain. Now commences the "tug of" eating. Each mem- 
ber of the party, except 
the dog who gravely 
occupies his chair, too 
well bred to manifest 
impatience, plants a 
napkin under his or 
her chin, of the dimen- 
sions of a moderate 
sized table-cloth. The 
females pin the ex- 
A FAMILY PARTY, tremitics to each shoul- 




PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 




der, so that in front they have much 
the appearance of being in their 
shrouds. The " carte" is studied, 
orders given, and content and plea- 
sure reign. At these family feasts 
children arc literally crammed, in- 
dulged vi^ith wines and all the del- 
icacies called for by adult taste, 
their parents delighted in proportion 
to the quantity they consume. Eat- 
ing, under almost any circumstances 
is to a looker on a vulgar operation. 
In one of these restaurants it is cer- 
tainly an amusing one to a veteran garcon. 
traveler, whose sensibilities have 

long since had their edges blunted. The waiter has a dozen calls 
at once — the same dish perhaps ordered dressed in a dozen differ- 
ent modes — he is to remember each mode and each table — to 
supply every change of course, omitting nothing required, and at 
the end of the meal he has to recall every dish, the quantity and 

quality — and there may have been 
twenty different articles called for 
at one table — that the " addition" 
may be made out. What wonder 
then, if in the confusion of orders, 
he at times mistakes his napkin for 
liis handkerchief, and unconsciously 
wipes the perspiration from his brow, 
performing with it the next instant 
the same service for your plate, or 
rushes in from the " cuisine" with 
six dishes piled pyramidically in his 
liunds, a roll of bread under each 




PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



arm, and the latest called for " addition" between his teeth. I 
was exceedingly amused at an incident that occurred at a well 
known cafe, in the Passage Delonnc. The order " Chef, uii 
bifstake Anglais, toutsuite," was heard, and the article as 
promptly prepared. The gar- 
den who brought it in vainly 
sought an owner. Each table 
supposed its neighbor had or- 
dered it, and the "bifstake" 
went the rounds unclaimed. 
The waiter had evidently a 
mysterious beaf-steak, dis- 
tinctly ordered but universally 
repudiated. At last it was dis- 
covered that a wag of a shop 
boy near by, possessing a touch 
of ventriloquism, had been 
amusing himself at the expense 
of " mine host's" kitchen. 

The French from early habit frequently make themselves 
very much at home at restaurants and cafes, spending their 
evenings at the latter, reading the journals, and playing chess 
or dominoes, paying for the same by calling for a bottle of 

beer or glass of brandy. I have 
myself seen a woman who had 
come in by herself, after fin- 
ishing her repast coolly throw 
herself back in her chair and 
proceed to take a comfortable di- 
gestive nap, apparently wholly 
oblivious to the existence and 
manifold trials of the race de- 
nominated "unprotected females.' 





20 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PRINCIPLES. 

At the same time a Frenchman having completed his meal, 
washed his hands and face in his goblet, used his napkin for a 
towel, adjusted his hair over the table, rubbed his hands with 
lemon and bread, and finally picked up a lump of sugar not re- 
quired for his coffee, wrapped it in a paper and put it into his 
pocket. We Americans are not open to the charge of over re- 
finement, but I trust it will be some time yet before we arrive 
at such free and easy manners. 

An Englishman dropped in, and in stentorian tones, called out 
in his Anglicised French, " Garden, don beefsteak, avee beaucoup 
da poommes da terres." " Oui, monsieur," replied the w^aiter, 
" avec beaucoup de plasir." " No, no," roared the Englishman, 
" avec beaucoup da poommes da terres." French politeness was 
proof even against this trial of risibleness ; but I must confess to 
my own inability to withstand smiling. 

At the risk of incurring the charge of mentioning trifling mat- 
ters, I relate incidents and difierences of custom which, after all, 
are those which come home closest to a traveler, for it is upon 
such trifles that his comfort mainly depends. To the experi- 
enced, they are doubtless flat and unprofitable ; but previous to 
that experience, the knowledge of what to expect would have 
been decidedly convenient. Besides, it is by comparison of 
national customs that improvement is evolved. Whatever is 
better done abroad than at home, should be at once engrafted in 
our own stock. A traveler may, by telling what he sees, find 
the result in improvements that add vastly to the aggregate of 
comfort or convenience of his fellow-citizens. Among them are 
always found some with ears open to friendly hints. 

The omnibuses of Paris are superior to all others that I have 
seen. Each passenger has a cushioned seat, with arms to him- 
self, which of course prevents crowding. As soon as the seats 
are filled, a sort of weather-cock sign, on top of the omnibus, 
with the word '* camplef,^' is elevated, which can be seen a long 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 21 

distance, and announces that no more can be received. Their 
omnibuses are Avider than the American ; the central part of the 
roof elevated so that a passenger can pass to his seat without 
smashing his hat ; and he has also an iron rod to steady himself 
and keep him from disarranging his fellow-passenger's knees and 
toes. They have also a system of " correspondence," by which 
a passenger, without additional charge, is transferred from one 
line of omnibuses to another, when necessary to reach his destin- 
ation. 

There is as much diflerence of opinion in regard to the relative 
merits of the American and French systems of hotel charges, as 
between their modes of dining. A Frenchman views with dis- 
gust the Anglo-American method of mixing meats, vegetables, 
and sauces upon one plate — mingling flavors that should be 
kept distinct, and destroying all the delicacy of a repast. He 
prefers to change his plate as often as he changes his diet ; and 
be it what it may, he never allows but one article on his plate 
at a time, devouring in the intervals of the changes quantities of 
bread. For my own part, I have learned to view his fashion as 
more rational and healthful than our own. So of the system of 
paying only for what one has at a public place, instead of our 
plan of lumping charges by the day or meal. A bath with us is 
a simple 25 cents affair. The reader will be as much struck as 
I was, with the following list of baths and charges I copied from 
a French bathing establishment. It illustrates, to a nicety, their 
system of division of charges : 

Baths, Single 18 sons. 

" Complete.. ..2/10 " 
'' Single Bareges 2 " 10 " 
" Complete '' 3 " 15 " 



Baths, Without smell 3 f. 

" Chemical 3 " 

Aromatic Baths 3 " 

Russian " 3 •' 



and four others. In all, twelve sorts of baths. The items of 
charges, at the option of the bather, were as follows. I should 
mention that he is invariably locked in ; there being no latch or 



23 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AiND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



handle on the inside, he can only obtain an exit by ringing for 
the "garcon :" 



Gelantine 2/'. 

Bran 1/. 

^ do .- 10 sous. 

Starch If. 

Cap 2 soits. 



Towels, hot 2 sous. 

Inside sheet 5 " 

Cake of soap If. 

Boy 4 sous, 

[or what you please. 



What shall I say of servants ? I found as good as I could — 
after having been cheated for the first week to the tune of about 
fifty per cent, on all supplies, by a Swiss Protestant cook. Upon 
being confronted with her accounts, and the original bills, which 
she had accidentally left in her account book, between which 
the above cash discrepancy was figuratively obvious, with the 
naivest innocence, she said they were intended for some other 
person, though made out in my name, and she would bring the 
correct bills, agreeing with her entries, from the grocer. It is 
customary here for the cooks to do the marketing, and procure 
the general supplies, settling accounts with housekeepers period- 
ically. This allows considerable scope for pickings, which the 
uninitiated, in due season, discover to their cost, if they are 
unable to speak French, and rely solely upon their servants to 
purvey. The British Ambassador, but a few days since, in 
arranging his accounts, previous to his departure for London, 
discovered that his steward had defrauded him of upward of 
$15,000. To those who go to housekeeping, I would say, ascer- 
tain first the prices of all staple commodities, and then, when 
orders are given, the correct cost can be known. In all cases 
require the original bills. Even if it be your good fortune to fall 
into the hands of " Boutiques de confiance," you must take it for 
granted that your domestic has a commission for your custom. 

The trained politeness of French domestics is worthy of all com- 
mendation. It begets good feeling between them and their em- 
ployers, and inspires a personal interest in their welfare, because, 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLKS. 



23 



as with coarser natures, there is no fear that kindness will encour- 
age insolence. A French domestic always uses the third person 
in speaking of or to any member of the family, even the youngest 
children. " Will Monsieur give himself the trouble to have his 
coat brushed ?" " Will Madame have the goodness to give her 
orders for dinner?" are invariably the style of questions ; and, 
" I thank you, Madame, very much," the response to directions. 

At New Year's they expect, with all the rest of the world, 
that have ever been paid for services rendered, the gifts of the 
season ; but, unlike 
the rest of the world, 
they are generous out 
of their scanty re- 
sources, in making the 
little ones about them 
happy, by tasteful pres- 
ents of their own 
make or selection. I 
was greatly amused 
on this anniversary, 
after having given the 
customary contributions of money and good Avishes, to teacher, 
domestics, porter, porter's child, letter-man, newspaper carriers, 
and I do not know how many others, to see the stately Suisse 
of the Madeleine, march in with a bun on a silver waiter, by 
the present of which he modestly hinted, that he was not above 
the love of filthy lucre, at all events, once a year. 

The politeness I have alluded to, is characteristic of all classes 
whose situations bring them into immediate relations with the 
higher grades of society. It is no derogation of self-respect, for 
a seller or an employee to express his thanks in a tone and man- 
ner, which makes his patron regret it is not in his power to 
oblige him or her by still further custom. Courtesy calls for 




-^^ 



CALLS AT NEW YEARS. 



24 PAmSlAN SIGHTS AiNU FiiEiVCtl PKJNCIPLES. 

courtesy in return. True, one may be cheated, and know it all 
the while, but the vexation is more than half neutralized by the 
politeness of the operator. A Parisian shop-keeper plays with a 
customer as an angler does a trout. He goes upon the principle 
of risking nothing, by asking a high price, as he has always on 
the tip of his tongue a load of reasons why, in your individual 
case, he should depart from his fixed rule, all of which are most 
skillfully directed point blank against your amour propre. I 
M^as asked two hundred francs for a picture, which, perhaps, was 
not greatly overvalued, but, being in the mood of testing the 
abating qualities of my virtuoso, I put on an air of indifference, 
and offered him much less. *' It is impossible. Monsieur, to take 
less, it is a real gem, all the w^rld comes to my shop to see it. 
I shall really weep when it is gone." He finished, however, by 
taking one hundred, " because," said he, " I wish the honor of 
making Monsieur's acquaintance." Shop-keepers, at times, 
carry this so far as to send their boys into the streets in pursuit 
of a customer to accept a price emphatically declined over their 
counters, on the score of principle. Strangers must make up 
their minds to pay much dearer than natives, and to buy their 
experience at a larger cost. As a general rule the sum first 
demanded is very wide from the selling price. 

" How many papers have you sold to-night ?" said I to an old 
lady, of whom I bought her last " Patrie," one evening. " Fifty, 
I thank you infinitely, sir," she replied, as she picked up her 
little bench, and started for home. In directing strangers, all 
classes vie with each other in attention. I have had a gentle- 
man run after me out of his own way, some distance, to correct 
a shght error he feared he had made. On another occasion, a 
young washerwoman gave me the information sought, and after 
I had proceeded quite a distance, perceiving that she had made 
an error, she ran to overtake me, requesting me to wait, while 
she ascertained exactly where the individual lived, whose resi- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES 25 

dence I sought. She inquired at a neighboring shop, and then 
eame to inform me, with pleasure and courtesy beaming in every 
feature, I should not forget to add that she left a basket of 
clothes in the street to -perform this kindness, which was done 
with a manner that effectually forbade any pecuniary recompense. 
This courtesy extends to preserving a polite gravity of counte- 
nance, under the most trying emergencies of ridiculous appear- 
ances or mistakes. I once, at a bath, ordered an '^ assiette" 
(plate), instead of a ''serviette'' (towel), to wipe me with. The 
waiter, without relaxing a muscle, comprehended my want, and 
in an instant returned, saying, "Here it is, sir," while I was in 
a roar myself at the absurdity of my order. I did succeed once, 
however, in disturbing even the gravity of a veteran garfon, by 
ordering " un fricandeau a I'oreille," a veal cutlet dressed with 
cai'S, instead of *' un fricandeau a I'oseille," that is to say, with 
sorrel. 

I have often thought it very singular that the French, who 
are so ingenious in inventing methods of killing time, should 
manifest such a fondness for clocks. That for looking-glasses is 
easily explained. As for the talebearers of time, there are more 
I believe, in France, than in all the world beside. Unfortu- 
nately, there is no connection between them and punctuality, for 
with clocks every where, punctuality is nowhere. This is vastly 
annoying to the punctilious stranger, but after innumerable dis- 
appointments, he reconciles himself to the universal system of 
promises and postponements. To wait is as natural to a French- 
man, as to " go ahead" is to a Yankee. 

The latter must be in motion in order to be at rest. He an- 
ticipates every thing ; the former waits until he is overtaken. 
An American business community would be horror-struck at an 
enactment which should require their day to commence at meri- 
dian. A Frenchman breakfasts at noon, and gets to work not 
much before the time Boston merchants go on " 'Change.'" He 

B 



26 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

dines, while the American sups, and comes home from balls at 
an hour when his transatlantic friend is becoming restless from 
over-sleep. 

Franklin undertook to convince the Pj^risians that it was much 
cheaper to use sun-light than gas-light, but did not succeed. 
Indeed, were the choice of the two given them, there is but little 
doubt that gas would receive the universal suffrage. At one 
o'clock, the Palais E-oj^al, or the Boulevards, displays less activity 
than Broadway at eight. 

At present, there are many experiments making in the use of 
the electrical light. Should it be economically produced, the 
sun might as well spare its rays for some other planetary system, 
for any use the Parisians would have of them. They would be 
cast aside as decidedly vulgar. A laughable incident lately oc- 
curred, arising from an amateur experiment of lighting a fash- 
ionable salon, in this manner. There were present some two 
hundred guests, in full toilets. The ordinary lights were put 
out, and the more brilliant fluid had just begun to dazzle the 
eyes of the company, when a terrific explosion was heard, fol- 
lowed immediately by another, and total darkness. Smoke was 
soon perceived. The curtains were on fire, but were promptly 
extinguished. There was, however, a universal stampede for 
the doors, but they opened inward, and the panic-stricken crowd 
pressed outward. Some one broke the window, and shouted for 
help. The people in the street called fire, and the 'pominers and 
sapeurs, with their apparatus, repaired promptly to the spot. 
Seeing the smoke, they began to pour in a deluge of cold water, 
and the more the confusion within increased, the greater their 
exertions to swamp the establishment. It was not until furni- 
ture and guests had experienced the effects of a thorough Feb- 
ruary soaking, that they could be brought to comprehend that 
they had been giving a gratuitous bath to a select circle of the 
friends of the " Comtesse de ." 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 27 

A "female-rights orator" has asserted, that if women had 
more of the occupations of men they would be more virtuous. 
By that rule the women of France ought to far excel in that re- 
spect their sisters of America. I will say nothing of their labor- 
ing in the field, their driving huge carts through the streets of 
Paris, and other rude labors which soon rub out of them all 
feminine softness, but confine myself to the more agreeable duties 
M'hich they have here usurped from man. Indeed, a man is 
but a secondary being in the scale of French civilization. The 
" dames a comptoir" are as essential to the success of a Parisian 
cafe as the cook himself. More hats are doffed at their shrines 
than before the most brilliant belles of the metropolis. My boot- 
maker, or the head of the establishment, is a woman ; my hat- 
ter, also ; my landlord is a dignified specimen of " fair, fat, and 
forty ;" my porter is of the same sex, older in years and worse 
in looks ; my butcher, milkman, and the old-clothesman, news- 
boy, and rag-gatherer beneath my window, ditto. They are 
waiters at the baths, door-keepers at the theatres, ticket-sellers, 
fiddlers, chair-letters of the churches ; they figure in every revo- 
lution, and have a tongue and arms in every fight ; in short, 
they are the bottom and top of every thing in France. They 
have so pushed aside the lords of the creation, that for some 
time my sympathies were really alive to know what men had 
left to do, until I finally discovered that they had the resource 
of becoming chambermaids. 

But there is one discovery the reformists of the sex can make 
m Paris, to which I beg particularly to call their attention, and 
that is, how to preserve the freedom of their "limbs" and their 
petticoats also. Bloomerism has no chance of success. A 
French lady, by a sleight of hand in lifting her dress, can cross 
the dirtiest streets, promenade through mud and mire, and 
bring home unsullied the whitest stocking and purest skirt. 
She does it too. with a natural grace and modesty which is per- 



28 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



fectly charming. I have heard American ladies covet her art ; 
and American gentlemen declare that the display of beautifully 
turned ankles in the finest of hose and fringed vi^ith the choicest 
of lace and linen, to be seen on the Boulevards during a shower, 
was not the least attractive of the sights of Paris, 

Observing a crowd one day gathered around a handsome glass- 
case exposed at the corner of one of the principal streets, my 
curiosity was excited to discover the contents. Allowing my 
reader to be the shrewdest of Yankees, his guessing powers 
would be at fault to tell what I saw. It was nothing less than 
a series of corns extracted from the feet of Parisian belles and 
dandies, of all sizes, from a pea to a scale that would have done 
credit to the horny hide of a rhinoceros, arranged symmetrically, 
as an incontestable evidence of the skill of the chiropedist. To 
have completed the attraction, he should have added under each 
the name of the original proprietor. The largest were veritable 
monsters, and would have figured to advantage at the London 
Exhibition alongside of the great diamond, as the most mag- 
nificent specimens of their genus in existence. 

The shop windows leave to the inquisitive bachelor little to 
learn of the mysteries of female toilet. That there may be no 
mistake as to the use of any article, wax figures with a bounti- 
ful supply of artificial charms are exposed, to show off the fit 
and make. The dentists, however, bear away the palm in prac- 
tical illustrations of their art. They have elegant gilt frames 
set with glass, in which are displayed artificial jaws with bright 
red gums and milky white teeth, others in every variety of loss, 
decay, and repair, row within row, like the anatomy of a shark's 
mouth, all opening and shutting in different degrees of velocity 
and emphasis, by some concealed mechanism, the whole forming 
the most complete exhibition of gnashing of teeth to be seen this 
side of " outer darkness." Above are wax heads which revolve 
every minute on pivots, showing alternately a ghastly, sunken- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 29 



jawed, toothless face, and the same lineaments freshened and 
llUed out with a new set of grinders spotless from the maker's 
hands. The effect of this, under the reflection of a powerful 
gas-light, is easier imagined than described. 

It is easy to perceive that the French are a practical people 
at the bottom of all their gallantry. They make their wants or 
wares known in the most straight-forward manner. Whatever 
they do — if there be not a bayonet to stop them — they do openly, 
and heartily despise the mysterious and abashed way in which 
their neighbors across the channel seek to arrive at the same 
results. I read in the " Constitutionnel" recently, that " A female 
orphan, possessing a good fortune, having immediate occasion to 
marry, desires a husband. Address, &c., &c." All over Paris 
there are marriage agencies, the objects of which are best illus- 
trated by one of their advertisements, which reads as follows : 
" 48 Rue d'Enghien — 26th year — M. de Foy, negotiator of mar- 
riages, to mothers of families." "Who would believe in an age 
of progress like this, that the thousands of marriages made in all 
classes of society by the mediation of M. Foy, during the past 
twenty-six years, have not yet wholly sufficed, among certain 
narrow minds, to demonstrate the striking truth, that it is a 
precious thing to be able to choose a party according to taste, 
from a rich list, and to use to advantage the knowledge of an 
experienced man to m.arry well ? To-day this absurd opinion is 
vanquished, thanks to the judgments of the legal tribunals, 
which have at length confirmed and sanctioned the morality, 
principle, and legality of the profession of M. Foy, as being, 
for him, invested with a special power. After so brilliant a 
triumph, an immense increase of his business has accrued to his 
house in France, and its branches in England, Belgium, Ger- 
many, and America. Interpreters for these four languages are 
attached to his office. Widows and mothers can then continue 
to address M. Foy in full assurance ; he offers them within 



30 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

twenty-four hours honorable situations of all ranks, even among 
the richest of those nations. The books are kept in a cipher 
known only by M. Foy. A mystery always envelopes his name 
in the negotiations and correspondence. The number of his 
rooms is a guarantee against all awkward meetings ; and to 
conclude, the house of M. Foy is a tomb and a confessional for 
all secrets. Address post-paid." 

At Paris one can order a wife or husband, and have either 
served up in less time than a new coat. Unfortunately, unlike 
that, they can not be put off at will whether they fit or not, but 
must remain until one or the other wears out. "While on this 
topic I should not forget to add, that if France can not boast of a 
Niagara or the biggest pumpkin, she has at this moment, in the 
town of Liege, a mother of " une fecondite extraordinaire." She 
is only thirty-three years old, has been married but nine years, 
and has presented her husband with ticcnty-four daughters, 
three at each birth. I had the honor of knowing in California 
a mother, still fresh and vigorous, of twenty-six children, but at 
the above annual rate there is no calculating what her French 
rival may not yet live to do for the State. 

A robbery was recently committed under circumstances too 
good not to be told. The thief entered one of the fashionable 
ready-made linen shops, and asked to see sundry articles for his 
wife, for whom he said he was preparing a pleasant surprise. 
" But," said he to the attending damsel, " I wish to be sure of a 
correct fit. My wife is about your height ; she has, like you, a 
fine figure — the carriage of a queen. It is necessary to add I 
have always been the admirer of the group of the Three Graces. 
Will you be so obliging, since my wife has just your size, or very 
near it, to try on this chemise over your dress ?" 

The obliging lass complied. The thief, pretending to draw it 
down, attached it, by means of a large carpet pin, to all her 
clothes, including her innermost garment. He then ordered a 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 31 

dozen like it at five dollars each. The shop-girl, well satisfied 
to have found so attentive a husband, attempted to take ofi' the 
chemise, but finding that as she raised it, her clothes also came 
up with it, she ran into an adjoining room to divest herself of the 
troublesome garment without exposing her person. In the mean 
while, the thief made ofTw-ith all he could lay hands upon. 

The tribunals witness occasionally scenes no less comical. A 
man named Grosours was brought before the Correctional Police, 
for having picked a gentleman's pocket of his handkerchief in 
the Champs Elysees. Although aged only thirty, the prisoner 
has passed not fewer than twelve years in jail, and on the day 
of the robbery he had only been released an hour, when he M^as 
arrested. A policeman having declared that he had seen the 
prisoner pick the pocket, and had immediately seized him, the 
prisoner cried passionately, "Ask the ass why he seized me by 
the collar!" "Don't speak in that way," said the president, 
" or you will be expelled from the court." " I am wrong — I ask 
your pardon ; but I am the victim of that fellow. Remark, 1 do 
not call him an ass from want of respect to justice. Why did he 
arrest me?" " Because he saw you commit a robbery, and he 
did his duty." " But he was in such a confounded hurry. On 
my honor, I should have put the pocket-handkerchief back again, 
as I only took it to blow my nose, because I had a cold. I am 
above a paltry pocket-handkerchief." " Why," said the police- 
man, " did you run away so fast, if you did not intend to keep 
the pocket-handkerchief?" "Oh, it was to get it washed ; it 
wouldn't have been polite to have returned it, after using i+, 
without washing." " That is not very likely," said the officer. 
" Heaven forgive me, if I do not believe the vile creature of the 
police suspects my honor I" " Be silent," cried the president, 
"you insult the witness." "But he attacks my honor." "Si- 
lence !" " I have, I suppose, the liberty of defending myself 
That brigand — " " Silence, T tell you !" cried the president. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



" If I am to be silent," said the prisoner, "the defense is not 
free, and I will retire." Here he attempted to climb over the 
dock, but was prevented. " Let me go, wiU you ? I tell you 
that the defense is not free. If I had an advocate he would re- 
tire, and as I am my own advocate, I may retire too." He 
again attempted to get away, but being stopped, sat down in a 
rage, and cried, "This is infamous I" The tribunal condemned 
him to six months' imprisonment "I protest," cried he with 
great solemnity, "because the defense was not free." 

These Parisians have their attention drawn, every clear night, 
if not toward heaven, at least toward the heavenly bodies, by 
ambulatory astronomers, who plant their telescopes in the most 
favorable sites for observing the planets, chalking on the side- 
walks, " Saturn is magnificent to-night — the moon is beautiful, 
and its mountains and volcanoes exceedingly distinct," &c. The 
instruments are superior, and the gratification and instruction 
derived, — for the gazer has the benefit also of a brief astronomi- 
cal lecture, — well worth the trifling charge of five sous. I have 
often stopped to get a brief lesson in this science, illustrated by a 
powerful instrument, such as one in America can only obtain 
access to with much difiiculty. Another, less instructive, but 
more diverting sight, is to be found among the dog professors, 
who, by blows and starvation, often force more learning into the 
heads of their animals, than a pedagogue succeeds in driving into 
human noddles. There was one hound which invariably played 
a game of dominoes through, with any opponent that offered 
from the curious crowd, without making a single mistake. His 
greatest difiiculty was in picking up such small objects from the 
ground. This he could only do by turning his nose sideways. 

The conveniences of life are so multiplied in Paris, that it 
would be a troublesome task to discover any new occupation 
iirising from human wants in any shape. The great difiiculty, 
^or a man supposed to have money, is to find any thing left for 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



33 



him to do. His wants are anticipated on every side with an 
alacrity and politeness that are really overpowering. He can 
not shut a carriage door himself. It is of no use making the 
attempt. A man appears as suddenly as if he dropped from the 
clouds, closes the door upon him before he can seat himself, and 
with hat in hand, begs Monsieur not to forget the trouble he has 
been at. 

The bachelor on whose head time begins t3 show its steps in 
the changing color of his hair, has but to step into the "Salon 
epilatoire," and he will find a private entrance tc a private room, 
tastefully furnished, where, in the utmost privacy, for two francs, 
he can have every gray hair extracted 
by a pair of tweezers in the pretty 
hands of a charming grisette, who, if 
she have not the beauty of Sterne's 
damsel, may possess equal wit. 

An American is made for in-doors, 
but a Frenchman's home is the out- 
side half of his house. It is for the 
street he sacrifices domestic comfort. 
He eats and drinks in the street ; he 
reads his newspaper and takes his 
dram in the street. To appear like 
ladies or gentlemen in public one day 
in the week, either sex will economize 
their personal wants the remaining 
SIX to a condition bordering almost on 
penury, to save sufficient money to 
hire, if they can not purchase, the necessary garments. More 
can be made of a small capital in Paris than in any other city. 
There is no occasion to buy any thing. Whatever is heeded of 
clothing, domestic utensils, or any article whatever, even to a 
newspaper, can be hired at moderate rates for any period of time. 




ON THE BOULEVARns. 



34 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 




One of tlie most striking contrasts between the French and 
Americans is in their physical appearance. Both sexes of the 
former look healthy and robust. Their countenances are full and 
florid, and have an expression of sensual ease and contentment, 
as if they were on good terms with themselves and the world. 
They have none of the care-worn, haggard American physiogno- 
my, which gives youth the air of age, and betokens a race in 
which labor and thought are paramount to all other considera- 
tions. On the contrary, the French when old, look young. The 
pleasures of this life oil the joints of age, so that time slips 
smoothly by. If any class belie their years it is the children, to 
whom overdress and physical restraint give an expression of 
premature gravity or unnatural heaviness.- 'No doubt the out- 
door, and "care not for to-morrow," life of the French, combined 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 35 



with their passion for amusements, has much to do in their fine 
state of preservation. Something must be put down to their 
superior toilets. For the English, with perhaps a higher con- 
dition of health, look beside them, to use a comprehensive term 
in the female vocabulary, like frights, or in other W'Ords, there is 
about as much difierence of exterior between the two races as be- 
tween a buffalo and a blood horse. This applies more particu- 
larly to the women. I verily believe an English lady to be in- 
corrigible in matters of taste ; or else it has become a point of 
honor with her to make herself as unattractive as possible. If 
both nations would divide equally their respective pride and 
vanity, the result would be a decided improvement in each. 
Add to this composition the go-ahead principle of brother 
Jonathan, and the world would have a specimen of a race that 
would soon distance all national competition in the essential 
points of order, beauty, and energy. 

For a man whose passions are his slaves, whose sentiments are 
obedient to his will, whose emotions are made so many sources 
of epicurean pleasure, who lives only to extract the greatest 
amount of happiness from the sensual world, regardless of a 
spiritual life, Paris affords resources which are not to be found 
elsewhere. It is emphatically the home of the man of the world. 
All that the head can covet is at his option ; but if he has the 
faintest suspicion of possessing a heart in which dwells the love 
of the true and natural, he had better withdraw it from the 
vortex of Parisian life, before it is sucked in too deep to escape. 



CHAPTER U. 

SITES AND SUICIDES. 

Ln the heart of Paris, in the centre of the Seine, connected to 
either bank by a series of bridges, which makes it resemble a 
spider within its web, is a quarter of the city a stranger's foot 
seldom enters. I mean the " He Saint Louis." I had often 
gazed from a distance upon its antique-looking mansions, all 
apparently of one character, height, and color, and wondered 
what sort of a race they sheltered. My curiosity grew until I 
determined upon its exploration. The suspension- bridge " De la 
Cite" took me to the Rue St. Louis en I'lle, which traverses the 
island lengthwise. The sombre appearance which characterized 
its exterior became even more apparent in the interior. The 
houses were high, streets narrow, clean, and quiet ; there was 
no trace of commerce, and the few shops that were to be seen, 
seemed to be there because they were too poor to move else- 
where. There were no carts or carriages ; the few persons- in 
the streets seemed to know each other ; to be in reality neigh- 
bors. They appeared cheerful and contented. I looked about 
to detect if there were apartments to let. Although all appeared 
so quiet, there was scarcely a sign indicating room for new- 
comers. Had it been at the same hour in a tropical climate, 
[ should have explained the universal calm by the afternoon 
siesta. But there were 7500 inhabitants on a very small spot 
of land to be accounted for in some way. I am certain I did 
not see one hundred. The greatest sign of life was the passage 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 37 

of an omnibus through its narrowest part, on its route to the 
extremity of the external city. The streets were scrupulously 
clean — every thing was old and faded, but neat. The quaint, 
polygonal spire of open stone- work attracted me into the church, 
the only public edifice on the island. Its interior was deserted 
except by a stray workman. It had some good pictures. The 
quiet of this core of Paris contrasted so powerfully with its noisy 
environs, that " it seemed good to be there." I inquired into its 
history. I could not learn that it had any. A sure proof of un- 
interrupted calm and contentment. It was the nearest practical 
approach to " Egalite" I had yet seen in the Republic. Its 
manners were unexceptionable. As their fathers lived, so live 
the present generation. No barricades had ever disturbed the 
slumber of its streets. No revolutionary hordes had made it a 
stronghold. Its most treasured souvenirs were, that in the Hotel 
Lambert, Voltaire planned his Henriade, and Napoleon, in 1815, 
held his last conference with M. de Montalivet, before he fled 
from Paris, to return to it no more. But its brightest boast, and 
one which makes it the white spot of this modern Lutece, is, that 
it does not contain a single prostitute. 

Leaving the " He" by another bridge, in five minutes I was 
again afloat in the mighty current of Parisian life. In the sol- 
itude and silence I had left, it seemed that when I had gone I 
should be missed. It was refreshing to believe that one's pres- 
ence was necessary, if but to enliven a desert ; but here, an atom 
among a million other atoms, tossed from side to side in eflbrts 
to avoid contact with thousands of faces, hands and feet that one 
has never seen before, and will never meet again, the conviction 
of individual nothingness grew strong and sad within me. I 
felt there was no solitude like that of a stranger in a strange 
multitude, speaking a strange tongue. Were I to plunge into 
the rapid waters of the Seine, the crowd would gape a minute, 
exclaim " Voila un drole 1" and pass by. 



38 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES 



Every step in Paris is a lesson in history. There is scarcely 
a street but has had its baptism of blood, its barricade, its 
combats, its slain, and more lamentable still, its martyrs to 
popular rage, or victims of royal revenge. Who can paint a 
picture that shall embrace Parisian character in all its shades ? 
To-day, light, buoyant, brilliant, sympathetic, courteous, enthu- 
siastic in art, overflowing v^^ith humor, displaying all that makes 
life attractive and graceful : to-morrow, ragged, disheveled, reek- 




PARISIANS AEOUSED 



ing with the sweat of a hundred barricades, and screaming that 
dreadful war-cry of crime, " Ca ira I" whose notes carry terror to 
every throne of Europe, and set millions of armed men in motion 
from one extremity to the other. Singular race I Equally ready 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 39 



to laugh or fight. Terror-stricken at the idea of death, banish- 
ing from memory, as far as xjossible, its dread reahty, yet plung- 
ing into crime and slaughter with the levity of buflbons, and the 
cruelty of Molochs. As I threaded my way through the joyous- 
hearted crowd, whose faintest jostle called forth a " Pardon, 
monsieur," with all the interest of tone a mother addresses a 
child upon a supposed hurt, and from whom the slightest acci- 
dent or loss drew forth genuine expressions of kindness and com- 
miseration, it was difficult to realize that their fathers, almost on 
the spot where I stood, had burned by a slow fire, made slower 
by damp straw, a girl of tM^enty, stripping her naked, cutting ofT 
her breasts, and slashing her fair skin with their sabres heated 
red hot, while her agonizing screams, borne on the still air of a 
summer evening, were heard as far as the Louvre. Her crime 
was wounding a republican soldier. An Iroquois never tortured 
a woman at the stake. This was reserved for chivalric France 
After this deed, it is no matter of astonishment that the heart of 
an aristocrat became a savory morsel, and the blood of a coun- 
tryman sweeter than nectar. The cannibalism of Paris put to 
the blush that of New Zealand. Pity and indignation never 
grow old at the recollection of the fate of the Princess Lam- 
balle ; yet her lot was mercy to that of many of her sex, every 
way as deserving. In those days of terror so great was the stu- 
pefaction, that it was necessary only to say to a victim, "Go to 
your house, remain there, and to-morrow morning the cart will 
call to take you to the scaffold," and he went. 

The grated archway of the Conciergerie still wears the same 
look of gloom as it did during the massacres of September, 1792, 
m an era when even the tribunal of which a Fouquier-Tinville 
was judge, could not do its work of slaughter with sufficient 
rapidity to satisfy the desire of the people for blood. Within is 
still to be seen, deep stained in the very stone, the "damned 
spot" made by the blood-dripping sabres of the ruffian butchers 



40 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

who, wearied with their work, had rested their weapons against 
the wall, while they recruited their energies by copious libations 
of wine. Those days were not the first in which the Concier- 
gerie had seen the people slay the nobles within its walls. In 
1418 its vaults for two days resounded to the agony of priests, 
ladies and lords murdered by an infuriated populace, who thought 
to avenge in these cruelties the disasters of Crecy, Poitiers, and 
Agincourt. On the 23d of August, 1572, its bells, answering the 
ominous signal of St. Germain I'Auxerrois, awoke another gen- 
eration of murderers to their work of blood. It was the night of 
St. Barthelemi, and what a night even for Paris I Fanaticism 
sharpened the weapons of hate. Says an eye-witness : " The 
continual noise of fire-arms, the piercing cries of the victims, the 
shouts of the assassins, the headless trunks thrown from the win- 
dows or dragged to the river, the sack of more than six hundred 
houses, made Paris resemble a city taken by assault." The pan- 
acea for every ill, has always been blood. Has it ever cured its 
patient ? Let Charles VII. answer for the slaughter of the Ar- 
manacs ; the edict of Nantes, for St. Barthelemi ; and a Bourbon 
monarch for the blood of September. Monarch, priest, or citizen, 
imperialist, monarchist, republican or socialist, each in turn adopt 
the sword and perish by the sword. " Paris," exclaimed Henry 
ni., chief of the kingdom, but a chief too great and too capri- 
cious, " thou hast need to be bled to cure thee ; also all France, 
for the frenzy that thou communicatest to it. In but three days, 
and your walls and your mansions will be seen no more, but only 
the place where thou hast been." A Dominican, James Clement, 
bore the reply on the part of her citizens to their angry king on 
the end of his poniard. His death was received with more ex- 
ultation than even that of Louis XVI. Fireworks, savage dances, 
gross caricatures, blood-thirsty songs, and a solemn thanksgiving 
to Almighty God in the proudest of the temples of the Prince of 
Peace, announced their joy that another murder was done, while 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 41 



the whole city rushed to bless the miserable peasant mother of 
the assassin. 

The rancor of political strife afTords some extenuation for re- 
joicing in the fall of an enemy, even by the agency of crime 
But what can we think of that spirit which finds pleasure in the 
agonies of a fellow-creature ? The populace, so sympathetic with 
the artificial distress which they pay to see in their theatres, 
weeping at sufferings which have no reality beyond the counter- 
feit emotions of mercenary actors, crowd with still greater eager- 
ness a place of execution. When Damien was tortured in the 
Place de la Greve, for stabbing Louis XV., the square, the win 
dows, the roofs, and every spot whence human eyes could reach 
the assassin, was occupied, even by ladies. For five hours they 
glutted their cold curiosity in his agonies. Unmoved, they saw 
his flesh torn off' his limbs with red-hot pincers — molten lead 
poured into his wounds — those wounds scooped out with knives 
— disturbing no mortal part, but probing to the quick, the vital. 
As a coup de grace, four horses were fastened to his limbs to tear 
him asunder. They were wearied out in vain efforts — two fresh 
ones were added, and these failed, until the joints of the misera 
ble wretch were severed by strokes of a hatchet. The only ex 
clamations were of pity for the poor horses, flogged to unwonted 
exertions to perform their part of the tragedy. 

The " Conciergerie" can not be the most refreshing sight for 
the inhabitant of the Tuileries, though it may serve, like the 
skeleton of the Egyptian banquets, as a moral on the pride and 
instability of rank. Its walls have imprisoned alike illustrious 
victims and the greatest of criminals. The confinement and tor- 
ture of Ravaillac failed to screen Louis XV. from the knife of 
Damien ; and he, in his turn, was no warning to Louvel, who 
aimed to destroy the Bourbon line in one blow. Fieschi, failing 
in his attempt upon the Orleans king, here spent the few days 
that intervened between him and the guillotine. Impartial in 



42 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

its destiny, it receives alike royalty and its assassins. The mem- 
ory of Marie Antoinette is indelibly affixed to its walls. Within 
them the Girondins held their last banquet. Louis Napoleon 
himself has left them too recently to have forgotten that the dis- 
tance between their towers and the Palace of the Tuileries, has 
not lengthened since he usurped the throne of Charlemagne. 

Simply to enumerate the sites of historical interest, would fill 
a volume. Yet who can pass unmoved the spot where the great 
Henry fell a victim to the fanaticism of his adopted faith, after 
escaping twenty-three previous attempts ? The Parisians never 
forgave the heretic king the siege they had endured. It cost 
them, from famine alone, thirty thousand men. Though they 
were reduced to browse upon the grass in the streets, and to 
make bread of the bones of the dead, they yet found strength 
enough to fire from their Myalls upon the Protestants, and to re- 
pair to their churches to listen to the exhortations of their monks. 
Their priests sustained their constancy, under sufferings not ex- 
ceeded at the destruction of Jerusalem, by promises of paradise, 
and by themselves guarding the entrenchments, making sorties, 
and sharing the duties and hardships of the meanest soldier. In 
their hatred of heresy they stripped their churches of lead to cast 
into bullets, and were the foremost in every combat, and the last 
in every retreat. 

In the Paris of to-day, one in vain seeks to recall the city of 
which Henry IV. became master. There were but few houses 
left entire ; the greater number were uninhabited ; grass had 
overgrown the streets ; there were no lights ; brigands pillaged 
openly ; one heard every where of thefts, ambushes and mur- 
ders. Strange, indeed, says Lestoile, to say that in a town like 
Paris, robberies were committed with as much impunity as in a 
forest. No one dared go out after sunset. All places of amuse- 
ment were closed at four o'clock. Added to these evils, the 
civil wars had begotten such a spirit of combat, that the streets 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 43 

were daily stained with the blood of those who fell in duels. In 
less than fifteen years forty thousand perished in this scandalous 
manner, and seven thousand pardons were granted. 

I never pass the narrow " Rue du Rempart," without recall- 
ing to mind the heroic Joan of Arc, who here was wounded by 
the English, while sounding the depth of the ditch with her 
Kince. FortuUvi-tely for posterity, and appropriately for herself, 
this Maid of Orleans has found in a daughter of Orleans, the 
Princess Marie, best beloved of Louis Philippe, a genius equal to 
the perpetuation in marble of her chaste and heroic image. This 
admirable statue is now at Versailles. It is some consolation to 
the descendant of an Englishman, to know that the ignominy of 
the death of this noble girl was shared by a Frenchman, Jean 
Cauchen, a doctor of the Sorbonne, by whose judgment she was 
sent to the stake. 

Another female, " spirituelle," talented and beautiful, whose 
life was consecrated to the amusement of the French, and whose 
melancholy fate is never to be forgotten by those who have 
once seen it depicted by the present queen of tragedy, lies buried 
in an unrecorded grave, under the pavement on the banks of 
the Seine, in front of the Palais Bourbon. The curate of St. 
Sulpice refused to receive in consecrated ground the corpse of 
Adrienne le Couvreur, an actress, although she had, in her will, 
left a legacy to the poor of his parish. 

Many of the public edifices have experienced no less strange 
mutations of fortune than their occupants. St. Lazare, a hos- 
pital for lepers, was also the temporary abode of the ancient 
kings, previous to their solemn entry into their capital, to teach 
them a lesson of humility and humanity, by a temporary sojourn 
among the most infirm and disgusting of their subjects. The 
corpses of the king and queen were also deposited here, previous 
to interment at St. Denis, to be sprinkled with holy water by 
these human outcasts. This hospital, of which St. Vincent de 



44 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES 



Paule was abbot, and from which Andre Chenier passed to the 
scaffold, is now a prison for prostitutes. 

The Convent of St. Augustin, for centuries the place of as- 
sembly for synods, councils, parliaments, and the Order of the 
Holy Ghost, has become a poultry market. The cells of Ave 
Maria, once filled with pious nuns, are now the lodgings of sol- 
diers ; the convent of the Jacobins, a prison ; that of the Cor- 
deliers, dissecting rooms ; the Capuchins of St. Jacques, a 
venereal hospital ; the convent of the Sisters of Visitation, a 
Protestant church ; the Jacobins of St. Germain, the museum 
of artillery ; others are corn magazines, prisons, stamp-offices, 
city halls, markets ; and the abode of the Holy Daughters of St. 
Thomas has been replaced by the Temple of Mammon, the 
present " Bourse." 




THE BOURSE. 



The revolution of 1789 has left so deep an impression upon 
ihe minds of the present generation, that, in the vivid recollec- 
tion of its horrors, we lose sight of the fact that the Parisian 
populace were but obeying the instincts of a nature transmitted 



PAlilSIAN SIGHTS AND FE.ENCH PRINCIPLES. 45 

as a legacy from one generation to another ; nursed in their 
mothers' milk, and made venerable by the traditions of their 
sires. If the noblesse rejoiced in the chivalric and proud Mont- 
morencis, Condes, and the Rohans whose motto was, " E-oi je 
ne suis ; Prince ne daigne ; Rohan je suis ;" the people of Paris 
were no less proud of their redoubtable butcher chiefs, the Le- 
goix. Saint Yons, and Thiberts, who, for centuries had been the 
head and front of every insurrection, whose descendants kept up 
the turbulent glory of their race, in the troubles of the League 
and the Fronde, and whose names are yet to be found among 
the butchers of the dreaded Faubourgs. The populace have a 
hereditary taste for tumult. They have a thousand wrongs to 
avenge ; a thousand examples to move them. Fickle in theii 
attachments, they are true to their natures. In 1227, to a man, 
they seized their arms, rescued Louis IX. from the hands of his 
unruly barons, and triumphantly brought him within their walls. 
Their children, six centuries later, ignominiously expelled from 
amidst them the last descendants of their saintly monarch. St. 
Louis grateful for their devotion, took the title of " Bourgeois," 
and called the citizens to his councils. For the fifty thousand 
souls that composed its population, he established a police of 
sixty men ; stronger in the love of the people, than the govern- 
ments of the present day, in the steel of sixty thousand bayonets 
During the reign of Philip IV., the populace undertook, after 
their usual fashion, to reform the government, by gibbeting the 
ministers, Labrosse and Marigny, voting the salique law, and 
driving the king from his palace to the Temple, in which he 
found a refuge. It was then without the walls of the city. A 
little later, the king returned the compHment, by hanging twen- 
ty-eight of the citizens to the four principal gates. Five hun- 
dred years afterward, another Capet, driven by popular fury from 
his royal abode, was conducted a prisoner to the Temple, from 
which he only issued, to be led to the scaffold, by the descend- 



46 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



ants of the very bourgeoisie his ancestor had hung upon a gal- 
lows. The successor of Charlemagne was compelled, under the 
mockery of Royalty, to humiliate himself before the peopl , from 
the windoM^s of the Hotel de Yille, with the red and blue cap of 
hberty on his head, which, with its silver clasp and device, " a 
bonne fin" (to a good end), had been awaked from its sleep of 
four centuries, to complete the humiliation of this unhappy king. 
Little did the republicans of 1364, when they added this motto 
to their colors of liberty, contemplate to what "end" they were 
preparing their emblem of authority. Under Etienne Marcel 
and his friends, they imposed laws upon the Dauphin Charles, 
regent during the captivity of John in England. Royalty was 
compelled to abase itself, and sue for favors to the assembled 
multitude. The regent, and Charles le Mauvais, by turns, ha- 
rangued the people in the Place de Greve, the place of execu- 
tions. The populace made themselves merry at these jousts of 
eloquence, hooting or applauding the princes, as they would 
comedians whom they paid to amuse them. The Dauphin, 
having seen his favorites slain before his eyes, in his own cham- 
ber, by the partisans of the " Liberte, egalite and fraternite," of 
that day, was reduced to beg his life on his knees, of Marcel, 
who replied by giving him his liberty-cap, as a protection, draw- 
ing him to the window, and showing him the corpses which 
had been pitched into the court-yard. " On the part of the 
people," replied Marcel, " I require you to ratify the death of 
these traitors, for it is the will of the people that has done this." 
The prince fled, assembled an army, and besieged Paris. 
Marcel was assassinated, and the royalists once more masters, 
true to their instincts, sought to wash out the humiliation they 
had endured in the blood of the popular leaders. This game of 
power has always been " If I win, heads you lose." But, like 
all depletions, the practice begets the necessity ; a truth in 
political therapeutics, not fully acknowledged, even after so 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



47 




lH£ bastille 



many centuries of accumulated proofs. On the spot where the 
Danton of the 14th century had met his death, the Dauphin 
built a triumphal edifice, as a monument of defiance to unruly 
demagogues, and a prison of state to reform or bury the poli- 
ties of obnoxious spirits. 
This fortified dungeon 
continued faithful to the 
interests of its builders, 
until the day when the 
popular colors of Paris 
became again victorious 
over the royal lilies of 
France. While royalty 
battled aristocracy, the 
Faubourg St. Antoiue 

remained quiet ; indifferent whether the cannon of the Bas- 
tile won or lost a husband for Mademoiselle de. Montpensier. 
She, with the inexplicable caprice of her sex, intrigued for the 
hand of Louis XIV., yet fired upon his army, causing Mazarin to 
exclaim, "Mademoiselle has killed her husband." But after a 
repose of one hundred and thirty years, its terrible population 
awoke, and on the 14th of July, 1789, avenged the abasement 
of their flag, and the wrongs of humanity, by the destruction of 
that symbol of despotism. 

European democracy has learned its trade of barric^ades from 
the Bourgeoisie of Paris, who after six hundred years' practice, 
have well-nigh brought the system to perfection. Whenever the 
genius of revolutions prompted them to reform the State, Paris 
found itself transformed in a day into a vast fortress. The en- 
trance of each street w'as closed by massive iron chains, and, on 
the appearance of an enemy, these chains were reinforced by 
stones, barrels, beams, and every obstacle to render them im- 
pregnable to the heavy-armed Barons. Alternately victorious 



48 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

and defeated, the democracy and despotism of the 14th century 
were synonymous with carnage and destruction. In 1382, Paris 
was full of pride and wealth, with an overflowing, turbulent, 
swarming population. It had then, according to Froissard, 
thirty thousand rich and powerful men, armed from head to 
foot, as well appareled as any Chevaliers, and able to fight for 
themselves, without the aid of the great lords. " In 1436, 
Paris," writes Lavallee, its historian, " was ravaged by famine 
and the plague, ruined by war, deserted by its principal inhabit- 
ants ; its population reduced one half; wolves infested the streets ; 
it had so many empty houses, that they were destroyed for fire- 
wood ; and it was proposed to remove the capital to a town on 
the Loire. In 1466, with a view of re-peopling it, criminals of 
all countries were invited to take up their residence within its 
walls." — With such precedents in its history, and such a germ 
in its population, is it astonishing that Paris should in its period- 
ical frenzies, exhibit every form of crime, madness and folly, of 
which human nature is capable ? 

Such were my refl.ections as I passed from one to another of 
the sites of historical events in which Paris is so prolific. The 
actors have passed away, but the human nature which gave 
birth to them remains the same. What does the future hold in 
store for this city ? Emerging from every trial greater, richer, 
and more powerful, the centre of arts and sciences, if she ever 
learn wisdom from the lessons of the past, to what may she not 
aspire ? But there is too much living interest in this turbulent, 
sparkling, ever-changing stream of humanity, for thought to re- 
main long fixed on what lies beneath its waters. I opened my 
eyes to the world around me and walked on. 

Although it was mid February, old women were knitting in 
the open air on the bridges, patiently awaiting customers for their 
humble wares. A noisy group was gathered around a large 
electrical machine, on the ecstasy of being pained by which, a 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 49 

professor in blouse was so eloquent, that he at last succeeded in 
obtaining a circle of greenhorns, who were willing to test the 
merits of the harmless looking array of bottles, wheels, and wire 
before them, even at the sacrifice of a few sous each. The pro- 
fessor touched them up pretty smartly. The shower that follow- 
ed of " Mon Dieus," and other exclamations of irritation and 
wonder, in which the French is behind no other tongue, seemed 
to be peculiarly gratifying to the more cautious, w^ho had kept 
their hands off the magical ware, while for a moment the carni- 
val dancers themselves might have derived some useful hints 
from the variety and activity of the hops and gesticulations dis- 
played. However, let a Frenchman make as much noise as he 
pleases, and he soon grows quiet ; so it was here, and curiosity 
to know how it really did feel, soon drew together a fresh set of 
victims. I had some desire to know how much of an income 
the owner derived from so striking an appeal to the sensibilities 
of the public, but the crowd was too great for me to get near 
enough to question him. 

On the duai du Marche Neuf, I came to one of the sights of 
Paris, which, like all others, by the policy of the government, is 
free ; but which it would be much more to its credit and to the 
benefit of public morals, if it charged a large fee for entrance to 
the merely curious. It was the Morgue, a name which, like 
that of Judas, stands by itself, the 
sole representative of its genus, spe- 
cies, and kind throughout the world. 
It is a plain Doric, cold, forbidding- 
looking building, perfectly in keep- 
ing Avith its uses. I entered, and 
saw three corpses, behind a glass 
partition, naked, with the exception ^^^ mokc^le. 

of waist cloths, and laid out upon inclined slabs, something like 
butcher's blocks. Tiny streams of water were directed over 

C 




50 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

tliem to keep them fresh. Their clothes were hung above their 
heads. Two were middle-aged men, the other a yoimg woman, 
Avho apparently had come to her death by drowning. 

The bodies of unknown persons are deposited here for three 
days, then, if not recognized and claimed, they are buried at the 
public expense. In a city like this, such an institution is one of 
undoubted utility ; but to make a public spectacle of the naked 
bodies of our fellow-beings, whom crime, misfortune, accident, or 
neglect may have brought to an untimely end, is unquestionably 
demoralizing in its tendency. Young and old, maiden and 
mother, the stranger as well as the citizen, one and all of the 
unknown dead must be brought here, stripped even of the rai- 
ment which in most instances would be the best test of recogni- 
tion, and exhibited to the morbid curiosity of those who, when 
they were living, passed them heedlessly by. Men, women, and 
children, even nurses with infants, came, gazed a few seconds on 
the revolting spectacle, and then left their places to those behind, 
impatif^ntly awaiting their turn. In making this exhibition s^o 
ur ..ecessarily public, I wondered why the government had not, 
with the system which it displays in every other place, provided 
a register for names, and a railing with a guard, to prevent 
crowding, and make the access and egress more facile. Seriously, 
this is a strange show in the heart of civilization. If it be not 
classed among the " necessary superfluities," and consequently 
an institution sacred even from the reforming hand of govern- 
ment, it imperatively calls for a change, by which the modesty, 
even of the dead, be not outraged, and the sensibilities of the 
living needlessly blunted. 

During 1851, there were exposed three hundred and seventy- 
one bodies or parts of corpses ; of these two hundred and fifty- 
iour were of the male sex, thirty-eight of the female, twenty- six 
new-born babies, forty-six still-born, and seven fragments of 
limbs. Among the causes of death, there were one hundred 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 51 

!_, 

and thirty-nine known suicides, twenty-five supposed, five homi- 
cides, seventy-one accidents, and forty-eight natural deaths. 

It is stated that the deaths occasioned by carriages had di- 
minished the past year. If so, this can only be attributed to a 
merciful Providence, for I never was in any city where there is 
more careless driving and apparent indifference to the safety of the 
foot passengers. The coachmen make a point to aim at pedes- 
trians, either to see how near they can come to them without 
hitting them, or to enjoy a malicious satisfaction in seeing thein 
jump in affright at the warning cry of " gare 1" as the horses 
are about to tread upon their heels. 

It will be remarked that suicides furnish by far the larger 
proportion of contributions to the Morgue. The papers teem 
with notices of, or attempts at, self-destruction. They appear to 
be more frequent than among any other nation, and for causes 
often of the most trivial and eccentric character. As illustrating 
the truth of the latter portion of my remark, I quote a number 
of cases taken from the newspapers during the winter, and which 
are well worth the attentive consideration of the student of 
human nature ; or, more specifically speaking, of those who 
perplex their brains in endeavoring to disentangle the Gordian 
knot of Gallic character. It may be questioned whether the 
horrors of the revolution of '89, have not bequeathed even to the 
mothers of the present generation this unnatural legacy of blood. 
Succeeding events have not had a tendency to re-establish the 
peaceful and healthy flow of the vital current. 

" Ernest B., of nineteen years of age, being jocularly told by a 
physician he had not long to live, took the words seriously, and 
fell into a profound melancholy. In his conversation he made 
constant allusions to his approaching end. Yesterday he was 
found hung in the garret of his father's house." 

For children of but twelve years of age to seek self-destruction, 
with the coolness and determination of adults, and for causes as 



52 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

trifling as the pleasures that then amuse, no other country but 
France can give evidence of, and none others but French moth- 
ers can give birth to such offspring. I quote from an evening 
journal. 

" Yesterday, a girl, scarcely twelve years old, climbed upon 
the parapet of the Gluai d'Augustins, and, after making the sign 
of the cross, threw herself into the Seine. Several boatmen, 
warned by the cries of those who had seen her jump, detached 
a boat, and made every effort to save her. But by the time 
they succeeded in reaching her, she was dead. 

" Taken to the Morgue, she was recognized this morning by 
her parents, living in the quarter of the Palais Royal. It ap- 
pears that this young girl had felt for one of her cousins a violent 
passion. He having left for a foreign country, she had conceived 
a chagrin which prompted her to this fatal act. 

" Almost at the same moment, there arrived at the Morgue, 
the corpse of another young girl, of the same age, who had com- 
mitted suicide, from a motive more easy to comprehend. 

" Toward the end of November last, Hortense R., belonging 
to a family in easy circumstances, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, 
left her school, to pass a day with her parents. She carried 
home an unsatisfactory note. Her mother gravely remonstrated 
with her, and reproached her, because, although twelve years 
old, she had not made her first communion. Hortense appeared 
much affected by these admonitions. At dinner-time, she could 
not be found. Her absence being prolonged late into the even- 
ing, her parents were much alarmed, and made every effort to 
obtain some tidings of her. 

** Since that time, Hortense had not appeared, and no one 
knew her fate. Yesterday, the body of a young girl was taken 
from the Canal St. Martin, where it appeared to have been 
for a long time. It was discovered to be the corpse of Hor- 
tense." 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PHINCIPLES. 53 

The same paper records the suicide of a girl of eighteen, who 
had been fined twenty cents for some trifling fault. 

The "Droit," of February 7, has as follows : " A triple attempt 
at suicide, accompanied with circumstances of the deepest immor- 
ality, has been for several days the only subject of conversation 
in the town of Batignolles, so seldom disturbed in its peaceful 
habits, by dramas of this nature. Clementine N., twenty-three 
years old, had, for a long time, held intimate relations with a 
young man of nineteen, Mr, P., clerk in a fashionable store, 
where she was herself a sales-woman. 

" By a precocious depravity, which we leave to moralists to 
analyze, Clementine, without renouncing possession of her lover, 
made him contract a second liaison with a young girl of fifteen, 
named Eliza, also employed in the same shop, and who did not 
yield, except at the end of long and reiterated temptations by her 
companion. 

" Sometime after this, she wished to give to P. a third mistress, 
and attempted to seduce another young girl, of the same shop ; 
but this one repelled the infamous suggestions of Clementine, and 
informed her family of the attempt. 

*' On account of this revelation, the father of Eliza, in his turn, 
was informed of all these disorders. Indignant at the recital of 
this shameful prostitution, he threatened to complain to the pros- 
ecuting attorney of the Republic, and enjoined upon his daughter, 
under pain of being sent to a house of correction, to cease all re- 
lations with P. and Clementine. When informed by Eliza, that 
their debaucheries were no longer a secret, and fearing the effects 
of the anger of the father, they resolved, by common accord, to 
defeat it by committing suicide. They re-united in the room of 
P., and having made their adieus to the world, in a joint letter, 
set fire to the charcoal they had prepared, which soon began to 
produce the first effects of strangulation. 

" Eliza, of a more delicate constitution than the other two, 



54 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



felt first the mortal symptoms. She then began to be afraid to 
die, and, recalling her sinking energies, threw herself violently 
against the window, which she succeeded in opening, notwith- 
standing the resistance of her companions, and declared she 
wished to return home. 

" Clementine and P., after having made new and useless 
efforts to induce her to die with them, yielded at last to her 
tears. They opened the door, and, as it was very late, and Eliza 
was taken with vomiting of blood, and scarcely able to walk, 
they led her to her house. Then returning, they relighted their 
fire, adding a postscript to their farewell letter, stating that Eliza 
had changed her resolution, and waited for death. Soon their 
groans attracted the attention of the neighbors, who, having 
knocked without an answer at the door, proceeded to break it. 
At the sight of the smoking charcoal, and the two young persons 
extended on the bed, giving no sign of life, they hastened to 
purify the atmosphere of the chamber, and to send for a doctor. 
Owing to the care bestowed, the two miserable beings were re- 
called to life. A few minutes later, and they would have been 
dead. Clementine had no sooner recovered her speech, than she 
overwhelmed with the grossest and most vulgar invectives, the 
neighbors who had interfered with her '' partie'' sport of suicide. 
She also declared that it was only adjourned, and that the next 
time she would take care to prevent any such impertinent inter- 
ference. 

The following case exhibits so powerfully the rationale of a 
suicide, that it deserves recording. The corpse was found sus- 
pended to a tree, near Paris, with the following note in the 
pocket : 

" Those who discover my corpse shaking in the wind, will, 
without doubt, feel pity or terror, and say, ' another unhappy 
victim of misery or disappointment.' They will deceive them- 
selves. T have always been perfectly happy. I feel that with 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AxND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. r,5 

age infirmities will arrive, and it is to evade the smallest grief, 
the minutest trouble, that I have decided to terminate my life. 
This may appear absurd ; but I find that when one has lived for 
more than sixty years, one should have had enough of life. I 
am alone in the world. I do not live in Paris. I believe it will 
be impossible to discover who I am. Besides, I have taken pre- 
cautions for that ; and, if there is any respect for the last wish 
of a dying man, I beg they will make no research on this sub- 
ject. I have left my resid-nce after having sold every thing, 
and announcing that I left for a foreign country. My fortune 
has been realized ; and the bank bills of which it is composed 
will have arrived yesterday for an honest father of a family, who 
will be made happy by them. I have so arranged it that he 
will not know from whom they came. Having nothing more 
to do in the world, I leave it Adieu." 

As I have no desire to make this chapter rival Madame Tus- 
saud's chamber of horrors, I will briefly add two other instances 
of those before me, showing how powerful a hold this crime has 
upon those in whom hope and joy usually burn brightest. 

The first is that of a girl of fifteen, who destroyed herself from 
jealousy of the love her mother bore her only sister, an infant of 
but two years. The other was one of the best pupils of the 
"Lycee Bonaparte," who, being wrongfully suspected of copying 
an exercise, disguised his intent, under the appearance of more 
than ordinary good conduct, until he had provided himself with 
the means of self-destruction. He then locked himself in his 
room, set fire to the charcocl, went to bed, and calmly awaited 
suflbcation. Fortunately, he was discovered, just in season to 
save his life. 

The annual number of suicides in France, is about twenty-five 
hundred. In Paris they vary materially. In 1837, there were 
two hundred and seventy-seven. In 1840, three hundred and 
forty-six ; and in 1843, four hundred and twenty-seven. 



CHAPTER III. 

A Sunday's walk. 

I KNOW no better way to convey a correct idea of a Parisian 
Sabbath, than simply to relate what one sees in a walk on that 
day. On the 15th of February, I sallied out at mid-day, and 
proceeding up the E-ue de la Paix, met a troop of cavalry 
coming down at full trot, duite a number of the shops were 
closed, and there were not many citizens in the streets. Indeed, 
for the dissipated and fashionable, it was about the time to 
expect them to be rubbing their eyes in bed, aghast at the 
thought that it was time to get up. The few that were out, 
were evidently in search, either of breakfast or some means to 
dissipate the ennui of the day of rest. Around the play-bills 
were the usual clusters, in meditation deep, whether to listen to 
Cruvelli at the Italian, to applaud their old favorite Ugulde at 
the Opera Comique, weep with Rachel at the Fran^aise, or 
laugh at the wit of the Montansier. Among the twenty-six 
theatres, it is to be hoped that each pleasure-hunter found one 
to his taste. There was also the usual assortment of concerts 
and fancy and masked balls. But the extraordinary attraction 
of the day was a pugilistic exhibition at the Salle Montesquieu, 
and a general contest with all sorts of arms, the notice closing 
thus : " The names of the professors who come together will 
attract, without doubt, all the true Parisian fashion to this 
solemnity." 

Following a crowd into a large hall, I found myself in an 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 57 

auction-room, filled with rich furuiture, silver-plate, and other 
articles belonging to some wealthy person lately deceased, whose 
heirs preferred the ready money. Sunday was selected for 
exhibiting them, as it was so convenient for the beau-monde 
to drop in on their way to church. Ladies were fingering 
specimens of Sevres porcelain with one hand, while in the other 
they piously clasped their prayer-books. The bills said the sale 
was for to-morrow, and the purchasers were to pay five per 
cent, on the amount sold, to defray the expenses of the sale. I 
asked a Frenchman why the purchasers were required to pay 
the commission for selling. " Why should they not ?" he re- 
plied ; " they have the benefit of the articles they purchase." 
I thought to myself that cash in the seller's pocket was a more 
convenient commodity than a marble Venus or bronze Antinous 
in the parlor of the purchaser, and consequently more justly to 
be paid for. I afterward found, having occasion to dispose of 
some furniture, that the seller was subjected also to a tax of six 
per cent., making eleven per cent, levied on all goods sold at 
auction. Upon asking the auctioneer why both parties were 
thus taxed, he informed me that his per centage was less than 
four per cent., the remaining seven being consumed by govern- 
ment taxes and a public fund. The business, like that of the 
undertakers, is a sort of semi-municipal monopoly ; and, whether 
well or badly served, the public must employ the few licensed 
auctioneers. At all sales there are two criers — one repeating 
from the other — the superior only wielding the deciding ham- 
mer All articles are put up at an auctioneer's bid publicly 
declared. To an American their system appears very cumber- 
some and dilatory ; and a sale seldom commences within an 
hour or two of the appointed time. The sales are held in 
certain fine hotels erected for the purpose. 

Leaving the Rue de Jeuneurs, I passed down the Rue Mont- 
martre, finding myself among an entirely difTerent character of 



58 PAPJSIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

population from that of the Boulevards, so far as externals went. 
Blouses and caps were decidedly in the majority. Mechanics 
were busy on new buildings, but the shop-keepers looked as if 
they would miuch prefer to be any where else than behind their 
counters. This I attributed to a bright sun, which, having 
suddenly come out, invited all the world to come out also. The 
markets were as lively as ant-hills. It was evident there were 
many good dinners in contemplation. 

The stranger who confines his walks to the new parts of Paris 
can have no idea of how and in what the poor people live. To 
ascertain this, he must thread the labyrinth of gloomy streets 
that lie between St. Eustache on one side of the river, and the 
Pantheon on the other. He will find many in which it is doubt- 
ful if the light of the sun ever reaches the pavement ; so narrow, 
that it would be nothing strange should the inhabitants shake 
hands from their chamber-windows on either side. The houses 
are all of stone, lofty, and stained with the accumulated grime 
of centuries. The narrow, dark entrances look as if leading to 
subterranean galleries. There is dirt within and dirt without ; 
there are no accumulations of filth on the pavements, but there 
are no sidewalks, and the feet slip about over their greasy surface 
as if it had been freshly oiled. It is in these retreats that poverty 
and students make their homes. As I threaded my way tlirough 
this forbidding quarter, I ceased to wonder that families who live 
constantly in Paris, in process of time, become extinct. At this 
hour there was not much stir in this part of the human hive ; 
but to account for this it must be borne in mind, that there are 
thirty thousand people in Paris who dare not show themselves in 
the day. Like bats, their safety is solely in the dark. "Woe to 
the stranger who falls into their toils, and no armed guardian of 
the night nigh. The search for the burial-place of Moses would 
not be more futile than the attempt to trace his end. I do not 
mean to say that because a street is narrow, dark and filthy, it 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 59 

is the abode of these land-pirates, but simply that there are streets 
in this part of the city which no prudent person should enter after 
night-fall. And in the day- time it is not altogether without risk, 
owing to a habit in much lepute among the dextrous, of coming 
behind the pedestrian slily, and jamming his hat down over his 
head. While the victim is disengaging himself, the assailant 
makes oft' with his purse or watch. 

It was a relief to reach the quays. Near the Morgue were sev- 
eral groups assembled around the usual variety of mountebanks 
that gather their harvest of coppers on Sunday in every quarter 
of the metropolis. They reminded me of the truth of a saying 
of Rabelais — not the demoniacal mocker of the sixteenth century, 
but a contemporary Protestant doctor of Montpellier : " The Paris- 
ians," says Rabelais, " are so silly, so stupid, and so inapt by na- 
ture, that a buffoon, a swiix-carrier, a mule with bells, or an old 
fool in a square, will assemble more people than a sound, evan- 
gelical preacher." 

All the groups were nov, however, of this description. The 
Parisians love fun, but they are as willing to extract it from the 
sciences as from any other quarter. I was much amused to hear 
a philosopher in blouse recount the merits of a strange-looking 
machine before him. He called it a " dynamique physique," 
recommended by the medical faculty to test the strength of the 
arms, the blood, the lungs, &c. A fellow-blouse, a young Her- 
cules in looks, paid a " sous " and took hold of the wires attached 
to a little box, containing, I suppose, the electric fluid, and from 
which projected a light handle. This the professor began to turn. 
The blouse resisted with his utmost strength, but the wires con- 
tracted and pulled him straight to the box, much to his astonish- 
ment and more against hi& will, as he had evidently calculated 
upon an easy victory over the slight apparatus before him. He 
went off, rubbing his arms with ludicrous energy. 

Near by was a market of the feathered tribe, guinea-pigs, cats, 



60 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PRINCIPLES. 

dogs, and all sorts of birds, and clean and unclean things in cages, 
which form the usual assortment of pets to both sexes of all ages 
in Paris. It requires no little dexterity in the crowded thorough- 
fares, to avoid being tripped up, by the strings by which the pup- 
pies — quadrupeds always when so attached — are secured to the 
belles in their promenades They are rightly named pets, as no 
equanimity is proof against that condition of temper, arising from 
an accident of this nature, especially if, as is not uncommon, there 
is a biped puppy at the other end of the line. After all, what 
can be more natural than these companionships, if the principle 
be correct, that " a fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind ?" 

Leaving philosophers and puppies, I followed the R.ue St. 
Jacques, until I found myself in the ancient " Thebaide " of Paris, 
so called on account of its numerous and extensive religious estab- 
lishments, the retreats of courtesans disgusted with the world, 
and high-born ladies who would, like Yalliere, expiate by the 
austerities of conventual life, the follies and errors of their youth. 
Their sites were judiciously selected, for they are all built over 
the catacombs, in which now repose a population of the dead, 
three times as numerous as that of living Paris. The Revolution 
has left of the past institutions nothing but their names. The 
Val de Grace (Vale of Grace) is to-day a military hospital ; the 
Convent of the Visitation of Ste. Marie, made commemorable by 
the virtues of Mademoiselle de La Fayette, a house of correction 
for disorderly women ; the famous " Abbaye du Port Royal," the 
abode of celibacy and all the Christian virtues, a lying-in hos- 
pital ; and, stranger fate than all, the Church of St. Benoit Tri 
nite, a low theatre, where the students and washerwomen of thi& 
quarter assemble to applaud the obscene comedies and furiou? 
dramas, which resound within the walls that once echoed only 
the praises of Almighty God. To a far more appropriate use has 
the Cemetery of Bonne Nouvelle arrived, if the inhabitants of the 
tomb may be supposed to have the same tastes, as when they 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. fi] 

dwelt in the flesh. It is now the site of the theatre " Gymnase 
Dramatique." 

The " Thebaide" of modern times is the abode of a rehgious, 
poor, and laborious population. I entered their humble church 
with far more satisfaction than the Madeleine, for it was built 
by the gratuitous labor of the working people, devoting, each 
week, a day to this pious task, their masters giving the mate- 
rials, and an illustrious penitent in a neighboring convent — the 
sister of the great Conde, one of the heroines of the Fronde — 
the Duchess of Longueville, providing the marble and sacred 
vessels of the altar. 

The Chapel of the Yale of Grace, now a military church, is 
one of the finest monuments of the city. It was founded by 
Anne of Austria, in fulfillment of a vow to build a church, in 
case she gave birth to an heir to the throne. She had been 
married twenty-two years without issue, and her final reconcilia- 
tion with her husband Louis XIII., of which Louis XIV. was the 
fruit, is attributed to the noble sentiments with which Mademoi- 
selle de La Fayette had inspired the king, at the sacrifice of her 
own love. Her life is one of the brightest triumphs of female 
virtue on record, and stands out in almost solitary relief of per- 
fect purity of thought and action, among the long list of the 
brilliant and beautiful of her sex, that graced the courts of 
France, during the reigns of her earlier Bourbon monarchs. 

The high altar is a copy of that of St. Peter's at Rome. The 
dome, painted on stone by Mignard, is called one of the finest 
frescoes in France. Its colors appear to have a little faded. The 
confessional used by Mademoiselle de la Valliere, previous to her 
taking the vail at the Carmelites, is still preserved. As it was 
not the hour, of service, the church was deserted by all, except 
the curious like myself Before I left, an attendant commenced 
lighting the candles for vespers. 

Next I sought that of the Sorbonne. On entering the gloomy 



62 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



ftourt-yard of this celebrated college, I found not a living being 
to greet me. The silence was as perfect as if the dead lan- 
guages had literally driven the living from out its halls. The 
porter was gone, and his lodge was empty. At last I discovered, 
in one of the cells of the archway, an old woman, who informed 
me that, by ascending four long flights of stairs in the most re- 
mote corner of the quadrangular edifice, I would probably find 
the sacristan. The tomb and monument of Cardinal Richelieu 
was worth the trouble, so I commenced the ascent. Midway I 
met a domestic, who, learning my wants, not only volunteered 
to find the sacristan, but declined a fee for his trouble. This 
official soon appeared and let me into the church, which it seems 
is kept locked up for his special benefit. 

The monument is the finest in France. It is of marble, and 
was executed by Giradon. The Cardinal is in a reclining pos- 
ture, sustained by Religion, represented by his niece, the Duchess 
of Guyon. Another, the Duchess of Frousac, personifies Sci- 
ence, weeping at his feet. It was concealed during the Revolu- 
tion, but the tomb was opened, and the heart of the cardinal 
placed on a pike, and paraded about the streets. The person 
into whose hands it fell, bequeathed it to his son, who was 
finally compelled by law to restore it to its proper resting-place. 
I asked the the sacristan if the students ever attended church. 
He shook his head gravely, as he replied " No," correcting him- 
self, however, by adding, " Now and then one." 

The Guillotine and entrance to the Catacombs are both in 
the immediate vicinity, but neither can be seen except by special 
favor or very considerable expense. For the first I had no curi- 
osity, but I should have been gratified at a view of this immense 
subterranean Golgotha, which, extending under more than one 
sixth of the capital, undermines the Pantheon, the Odeon, Ob- 
servatory, the Palace of the Luxembourg, the streets La Harpe, 
St. Jacques, and, strange to say, Hell itself. Visitors are inter- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. r,3 



dieted on account of the dangerous state of the roofs, which re- 
quire constant propping. The entrance to the Catacombs is 
very appropriately at the " Barriere d'Enfer," (Gate of Hell.) 

Making a virtue of necessity, I left the dead below the city 
in the undisturbed solitude of their abode, and proceeded to visit 
the Cemetery of Mont Parnasse, outside the barrier of that name. 
The vacant spaces between the Boulevards and the gate of the 
city were filled with peddlers, jugglers, and a crowd busy in buy- 
ing or applauding. The usual array of stone-cutters' shops, em- 
bracing every variety of unlettered monuments, awaiting the 
record of departed virtues, betokened the proximity of the bury- 
ing-ground. Passing through the gate, I found myself in the 
centre of a fair of the lowest class. The amusements, gardens, 
and cafes bore the same relation to the corresponding resorts 
within the walls, as that receptacle of the debris of the vanities 
and miseries of Paris, the market of old linen, does to the elegant 
shops of the Rue Vivienne. "Wine was but six cents a bottle, 
and brandy twenty. The liquor shops abutted upon the veiy 
walls of the cemetery. They were filled to overflowing, and the 
noise that arose from the French tongues, made doubly active 
by the stimulus of their favorite beverages, can only be conceived 
by ears that have listened to it. The clatter of fifty cotton mills 
is silence in comparison. Cake and pie women cried their co- 
mestibles at every pace. The clear air of heaven was poisoned 
Dy the fumes of the vilest tobacco ascending from the filthiest of 
pipes. It was too early in the day for intoxication to have made 
much progress, but the tide of debauch was evidently on the rise. 
Such was the spectacle allowed by French taste to exist almost 
over the graves of their parents. And yet the same people un- 
cover their heads to a passing funeral. 

In front of the cemetery wall was a line of some forty women, 
each with a number and her name on a little sign, and having 
displayed before her an assortment of gifts of all sorts, such as 



64 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES 

French affection lavishes upon buried friends. There were stat- 
uettes of saints and innocents ; crucifixes and Christs ; artificial 
flowers ; porcelain vases ; natural wreaths ; and piles of white 
and yellow immortelles inscribed on them in black letters, " a 
mon pere," " a ma mere," and so on through the entire degrees 
of consanguinity and friendship. Some had simply " amour," 
" souvenir," " regard," &c. Each one of the forty hucksters of 
tributes of afiection assailed the wayfarers with every variety 
and tone of argument, to induce a sale of her wares in preference 
to those of her neighbors. The mourner who visits the grave 
must run this gauntlet of traflic. Habit, doubtless, as in every 
thing else, renders the nuisance less noticeable ; but a custom at 
the entrance of a cemetery, which reminds an American of the 
contests of hackney-coachmen at a steamboat landing, strikes 
him as jarring painfully with the sacredness of the place. I 
was pleased to see, however, that almost every visitor brought 
some souvenir to hang up over the graves they came to visit. 
This was particularly the case with little children, and must 
inspire them not only with respect for the departed, but divest 
the grave-yard of that indefinable horror with which it is too 
apt to be regarded by the young in America. 

Mont Parnasse is a pleasing contrast to Pere la Chaise. Like 
all French cemeteries, it is laid out with the mathematical pre- 
cision of a town, and the graves so crowded, that they literally 
are in want of elbow-room. Still the greater number were sim- 
ple and appropriate. All had more or less tokens of the affection 
of the living about them. There were enough trees to give it a 
rural aspect, although they were planted in stiff rows. The 
family tombs had none of the cold and stately magnificence of 
Pere la Chaise. They were true to their intent externally. 
The interior arrangements were not in keeping with the spiritual 
world, however much they might correspond with the taste of 
the living. I counted no less than one hundred and twelve 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. en 

"immortelles" on one grave. These are as touching a memorial 
for affection to offer as can be devised. But to look into a tomb 
through a gilt grating, and see upon an altar, in form of a dress- 
ing-table, vases of artificial flowers, silver candlesticks, or a gilt 
lamp, and the usual decorations of a boudoir, recalls too much 
of the coquetry of life. Yet such is French taste in the decora- 
tion of the abodes of death, and the crowd press to see this vain 
display, with the same light expressions of admiration that they 
utter around an exhibition of fashionable novelties in a shop- 
window. 

Pere la Chaise is the parent of modern rural cemeteries But 
what a contrast does it afford to 
the natural beauties of a Mount 
Auburn, or a Greenwood ! In- 
stead of the labyrinthine paths, 
bordered with flowers and over- 
shadowed by forest trees, nature 
refined by art, yet leaving undis- 
turbed that solitude which afflic- 
tion seeks as a repose for its dead, 

it is literally a necropolis. It has ^^ fontaine. moliere. 
its paved streets and walks, its monuments of every size and 
fashion, so closely piled together, that nature is entirely banished. 
It is a wilderness of carved stone, and an album of epitaphs, to 
read which one would fain believe that naught but virtue and 
worth ever dwelt in Paris. If these be true, where are the bad 
buried ? What are we to think of the pride of birth, that builds 
a mausoleum to a 

" Very high, very excellent, 

and very powerful Princess, 

aged one day?" 

How different the tomb-stone of genuine affection with its sim- 
ple "Marie." This Mary may have followed Jesus like those 




60 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



who were latest at the cross, and first at the grave. She may- 
have been the infant of a day, or the mother whose eyes were 
closed by a new-born babe. Whoever she was, modest love re- 
tains the secret. 

A neighboring epitaph was of a cloth-merchant, terminating 
his catalogue of virtues with the announcement " His widow 
continues his business, Rue Saint Denis, 349." 

This epitaph, so ultilitarian and business-like, recalls to my 
mind that of Milton in Westminister Abbey, in which the im- 
mortality of the poet is quite engulfed in the egotism of the 
erector, who, under the pretense of honoring him, to whom 
neither marble nor consecrated ground can add honor, sought 
for himself and his titles a distinction which survives only to 
proclaim his ridiculous and ungrammatical vanity. It is as 
folloM's : 

A East of Milton. 

[Underneath.] 

"Milton. 

In the Year of our Lord Jesus Christ 

1707 

This Bust of the Author of Paradise 

Lost was placed by William 

Benson, Esquire, One of the 

Two Auditors of the Imprests 

to his Majesty, George 2nd., 

formerly Surveyor General 

of the Works to his Majesty 

King George the First. 

Keysbrook was the 
Statuary who cut it." 

This is about equal in pathos to the famous apostrophe : 

"0 Sophonisba, Sophonisba !" 

The situation of Pere la Chaise, as regards the view of Paris and 
its environs, is beautiful. Its chief attraction is the monument 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



67 



of Abelard and Heloise, a delicate Gothic 
structure, more suitable for some sacred edi- 
fice, than the open air. From the number 
of immortelles hung about it, it is evident 
that the memory of their loves is still green 
in the hearts of their countrymen. 

All that wealth and taste can create 
from stone has been done to honor the dis- 
tinguished dead that are here interred ; yet 
the most conspicuous monument of all, a 
light-house in proportions and design, bears the name of an 
individual laiown only for its extravagant cost. Napoleon's 




HELOISE ET ABEtLARD. 




MASSENA. LEFEBVRE. 



CAMBACERES. 



marshals lie thick here, but the bravest of them all has neither 
stone nor story to mark the spot where he sleeps. This rivalry 
of magnificence in the house of death extends so far, that M. 
Boulard journeyed to the quarries of Carrara to select the spot- 
less marble that now presses upon his remains. 

There are already more than sixteen thousand tombs on which 
have "been expended upward of $25,000,000, yet owing to the 
character of the material of which they are in general construct- 
ed, and their dehcacy of execution, they will mostly disappear 
before the end of the present century. I was particularly struck 
with one monument, composed in part of mutilated sculptures from 




6H PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

the resting-place of some subject of Augustus 
or Alexander, who little thought, in preparing 
himself a proud sepulchre, he was but fur- 
nishing the materials to erect the tomb of a 
descendant of a barbarous Gaul. I noticed 
that the government had erased from the 
gateways the words " Liberte, egalite, frater- 
nite," the only spots where they could Avith 
truth have remained. countess demidoff. 

While on the subject of monuments I would call the visitor's 
attention to one of Valentine Balbiano, wife of Rene Biraque, 
carved by Pilou. It is on the ground floor of the Louvre, in the 
Hall of the Sculptures of the Middle Ages and Revival of Arts. 
Above is a beautiful female, of perfect contour, and richly dressed 
in the fashion of the era, the whole delicately sculptured in 
white marble. Below in bas-relief, is the same female lying in 
her coffin, with her loins only covered, and wasted away to the 
extremest point of attenuation, leaving her bosom, face, and other 
portions of the body exposed. The contrast between the lovely 
figure above and the shrunken remains of loveliness beneath, ex- 
hibiting all that is most repulsive in death, is very striking, 
some would say disgusting. At all events, it is a curious fancy 
and not without its moral. 

To return to my walk. Re-entering the city, I met crowds 
pushing on to the cheaper wine-shops and amusements outside 
the barrier. As I passed the stately Temple of St. Sulpice, its 
congregation was entering for evening worship. Right opposite 
was a theatre, in which the performers were all " singes sa- 
vants," learned monkeys. That, too, had its throng. The 
Faubourg St. Germain wore its usual air of aristocratic quiet, 
except there were more ladies about than usual, wending their 
way to the fashionable church of St. Thomas d'Aquin. Most of 
them were in mourning for the late Duchess d'Angouleme, who 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



69 



was gi-eatly beloved by the Legitimists. It is said, she occasion- 
ally visited them incognito from her place of exile, the govern- 
ment considerately turning a blind eye to that quarter on those 
occasions. 

Of the fullness of the Museums it is needless to speak. Next 
to religious instructions they are the most desirable schools for 
the people, and it w^as gratifying to see the interest with which 
all classes flock to them. 




GliAiND AVKNUE OF THE TUILEKIK.- 



The Garden of the Tuileries swarmed like an ant-hill with 
children, dressed like show-dolls, and their ''bo7ines'' and mammas. 
It was easy to see how the national taste for display was perpet- 
uated. These little sprouts already manifested an incipient 
vanity which promised soon to swell into a settled passion. 
Their personal appearance was their first care. Their toilette 
preserved, they then frohcked with what spirit and liberty were 
left them. It required no httle dexterity to avoid stepping upon 
some toddling infant, to prevent being tripped up by a stray 



^0 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 




vl LN OF THE TLILEllIES ON SUNDAY. 



lioop, or hit by a flying ball. The boys were sailing miniature 
boats on the ponds, while their sisters fed the swans. There 
was no quarreling or ill-humor. I returned to my lodgings 
with their juvenile shouts still ringing in my ears, and had hardly 
seated myself, before a strolling musician, with a dancing monkey 
let off a whole volley of polkas and mazourkas from his hand- 
organ, right under my window ; but as I gave him no copper 
he removed his quarters to some more propitious neighborhood. 
He was succeeded by another of his species, who played, and 
admirably too, what seemed to me the strangest of all the 
strange things I had seen and heard that day, the good old 
familiar psalm tunes of Old Hundred and Granville. These last 
were indeed a treat in Paris. 

I do wrong to say the strangest of all the strange things I had 
seen that day, for I think my readers will agree with me, that 
the following notice, which I copied verbatim from the shutters 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 71 

of a shop on the Boulevard Madeleine, merits for Paris that 
description : " Pour obvier un desagrement qui par le temps qui 
court, arrive trop souvent de venir quelque fbis de fort loin les 
dimanches et fetes chomees frapper nos portes avec perseverance 
pour se procurer de nos denrees. Commo la treve qui fesons aux 
affaires les jours feries nous est dictee par nos croyances, il est 
bien qu'on sache que les ventes du Bazar Provencal n'ont bien 
que les six jours ouvrables de la semaine, le septieme etait con- 
sacre au repos comme Ton fait nos peres sans interruption par la 
tradition jusqu'a la promulgation du decalogue dicte par le tout 
puissant a Moise sur le Mont Sinai, Heritiers des croyances et 
practiques religieuses de nos aieux, nous suivons ponctuellement 
la hgne qu'ils nous ont tracee sans en devier un iota." In free 
English as follows : "To obviate the inconvenience which, as 
the times run, happens too often, that persons come from a dis- 
tance sometimes, on Sundays and holy-days, to knock persevering- 
ly at our doors to purchase our merchandise, this is to give notice, 
that we open our shop only on the six working-days of the w^eek, 
the seventh being consecrated to repose, as was done by our 
fathers without interruption, ordered by tradition and the deca- 
logue dictated by the Almighty to Moses on Mount Sinai. In- 
heriting the religious faith and practices of our ancestors, we 
follow strictly the line that they have traced for us without 
deviating an iota." 

The restaurateur of Paris who closes his doors from religious 
principle on Sunday, is deserving of respect for his abnegation 
of his pecuniary interest. But to add to this a sermon in an 
indelible inscription on his window-shutters, on the observance 
of the Sabbath, is an evidence of moral courage one little expects 
to find in this gay and pleasure-loving capital. I must add, 
however, that our sermonizing shopkeeper notified the public that 
he would send purchases home on Sunday morning, when re- 
quired. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PRODIGALITY OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. 

To the lovers of vocal music the Church of Saint Elizabeth in 
the Rue du Temple affords a rare treat in the voice of one of the 
choir, a boy of thirteen, the son of a shoemaker. His celebrity 
is such that opera singers and the amateurs of Paris flock to hear 
him. Large offers have been made him to sing at the Made- 
leine, but he has refused to leave his parish church. A friend 
in describing to me his voice, compared it to that of an angel. 
Although no musician, and never having had the satisfaction to 
hear a celestial songster, yet I must confess, that my enraptured 
ears were ravished with the melody of his rich notes, now filling 
every portion of the church with their sonorous harmony, then 
subsiding into a strain scarcely audible, yet thrilling every nerve 
with pleasure. His organ is wonderful, and if its power is pre- 
served will lead him to eminence. 

The Catholic ritual is undoubtedly an impressive form of wor- 
ship. But, like the stage, it requires to be seen from a certain 
distance to preserve the sacred illusion. "Where there is so much 
machinery and ceremony, there can not fail to be a proportion 
of tinsel and heartlessness, which ill accords with a Protestant's 
idea of the simplicity and sincerity to be exhibited in divine 
worship. It is true, education shapes our ideas, but it is equally 
true that common sense does not always yield herself blindly to 
habit, and reason will protest at the violence done her judgment. 
A Catholic is armed at all points on questions of faith, but it 
would puzzle the most zealous proselyte of Rome to defend on 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCII PRINCIPLES. 



73 



any grounds of consistency with the doctrines of the meek and 
lowly Jesus, many of the practices introduced by his church into 
their rites. In the United States a clergyman who requires a 
sexton to open and close for him the pulpit-door is viewed as 
trespassing somewhat on the humility he preaches to his congre- 
gation. The conscientious sensitiveness of such critics would be 
alarmingly agitated in attending worship in this city. 

I was at Saint Elizabeth's during vesper service, and took my 
station in the rear of the altar, by the choir door which leads to 
the sacristy. The position was well chosen to observe the cere- 
mony. Of what Sydney Smith calls " man millinery " there was 
the usual variety ; each of the different orders that take part in 
the service having its peculiar costume. With the various genu- 
flexions, lighting of candles, ringing of bells, elevation of the host, 
every reader who has attended this service is familiar. To those 
whose faith they quicken, they are well. But the going to and 
fro between the choir and sacristy of the various assistants, often 
smiling and winking as they passed, the dodging about of the 
little boys with red skull-caps, the obsequious holding up of the 
skirts of the priests by their juniors, 
bespoke a service cumbered with 
much serving. The most striking 
figure, and, if there is any reliance to 
be placed in Lavater, the most im- 
portant in his own opinion, in the 
scene was the " Suisse." Every 
church has one or more, caricaturing 
in costume the uniform of a field- 
marshal. Those of San Roch, glitter 
in gold lace, rich embroidery, chapeau 
de bras, white tights, gloves, side- 
arms, halbert in one hand, and an 
immense cane with an enormou? 0-ilt 

D 



/^ 




LE Sl'I?SE 



74 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



head in the other. My friend at Saint Elizabeth was the most 
modestly an-ayed that I had seen of his class. He was of the 
orthodox height, six feet and upward, shoulders in proportion 
(for this size is a " sine qua non " to the office), wore a black 
uniform with crimson facings, and silver embroidery, chapeau, 
rapier, silver epaulet on one shoulder, and a ribbon knot with 
three ends silver- worked on the other, buttons and stripe to pants 
of same, gilt. He appeared so ill at ease, that I judged him a 
novice in this harness. I noticed that he alone was privileged 
to stand before the altar uncovered, and indeed his sole avoca- 
tion seemed to be at certain intervals to bring the metal ends of 
his spear and cane down upon the pavement with an emphasis 
that made my toes involuntarily shrink within my boots. 
Whenever the cure or vicars passed to another part of the 
church he preceded them, causing the stone pavements to ring 
to the pounding of his two weapons. On meeting his superiors, 
he gave a half-military salute. The Suisse leads the way for 
the priests who take up the collections during the service, cry- 
ing out in an imposing voice — " Alms, if you please, for the 
church, the poor, the worship of the Virgin," or whatever may 
be the occasion. Indeed when the church is full, without 
the aid of their colossal proportions and the salutary terror in- 
spired by thei*r manner of handling their insignia of office, it would 
be difficult for the priests to make their way from the high altar 
to other spots where their functions call them. Before the service 
concluded, there were several infant baptisms. The "Suisse" 
ushered the parties into the baptismal chapel, and I followed him 
to witness the ceremony. The first infant had only a mother 
present, and the priest ordered the Suisse to stand sponsor. To 
my surprise, he told him to take off his chapeau, which appeared 
to surprise him too. As on eveiy other occasion that I have seen 
this sacrament performed, it was done with such a rapidity as 
lo render it utterly unintelligible ; the only word distinctly uttered, 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PR1NCIPL3S. 



75 



being at intervals by the Suisse, who responded " amen" in the 

sharp, ringing tone that Jack gives when he rephes " Ay, ay, 

Sir," to an unexpected hail. In the mean while he was occupied 

with adjusting his shoulder-knot, and glancing about him evi- 

idently to count the number of admiring eyes. As the Catholic 

rite requires not only to wet the hair but the skin, this was so 

liberally done that the infant uttered a most vigorous protest, in 

accents any thing but in concert with the musical prodigy, who 

at that moment was pouring forth his notes at the other end of 

the church. The ceremony concluded with a lighted candle, and 

the usual signing and kissing the cross, turning of robes, and 

holding the end with the embroidered cross over the child's 

head. 

In this church there is a Mater Dolorosa by Bezard. It is a 

dead Christ of the size of life sitting bolt upright, with nothing 

on but a waist-cloth, in the arms of his mother, who looks 




76 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FEENCII PRINCIPLES. 

younger than he, and is holding him with much the expression 
and attitude any woman would assume with a corpse in her lap. 
I have never seen a sacred subject more incongruously treated, 
unless it is in a painting in the long gallery at the Louvre, by 
one of the old masters, representing the three Marys assisting in 
the descent from the cross. The mother of Jesus, who is sup- 
porting her son's legs, is dressed in the fashionable costume of a 
grand lady of the fourteenth century, with rich bracelets on her 
bare arms, kid gloves deeply edged with fine lace on her hands, 
and a profusion of pearls and diamonds on her neck and bosom. 
St. E-och not long since boasted a painting of a black Christ, the 
work of a Creole artist, but it has been removed. 

In the Louvre there is also a ludicrous bas-relief, representing 
Joseph at work at his carpenter's bench, while about him is 
a squad of little angels piously picking up all his chips, and 
quarreling as to who should get the most. The Virgin is watch- 
ing the Infant Jesus asleep in a sort of Pilgrim Father's cradle, 
buried up in heavy bed-clothes. Other infantile angels are 
rocking the cradle and holding the thread for Mary's distaff, 
which she is nimbly plying. The Almighty seated on a cloud, 
with the Pope's tiara on his head, is watching the group with a 
very parental air. Sad liberties are often taken by Catholic 
artists with sacred subjects under the most devotional impulses. 

The clergy are adroit in taking collections, if there is faith 
to be placed in the power of beauty to draw the purse-strings. 
The following is a sample of the usual notices given through the 
newspapers. "An Assembly of Charity will be held at the 
Church of St. Eustache, Sunday, 25th of January, on behalf of 
the poor, assisted by Monsieur the Cure, the Sisters of St. Vin- 
cent de Paule, and the work for the visitation of the sick. At 
half past two, vespers and sermon by Monsieur the Abbe Du- 
quesnay, Chanoine of Paris, the raising of the host by My Lord 
Margueirie, Bishop of St. Fleur, named to the See of Autrens. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 77 



The collection will be taken by Mesdames the Duchess of Gram- 
mont, 38 Rue de la Ville I'Eveque, the Marquise de Vesins, 23 
Rue d'Anjou St. Honore," and so on, naming the title and resi- 
dence of each lady. 

The office they undertake is no sinecure. I was present at 
the fete of St. Cecile in the same church, when a collection was 
taken. The ladies in rich toilets were conspicuously placed 
in the stall of the trustees. At the termination of the discourse, 
they sallied out on their errands of benevolence, each with a 
beautifully wrought crimson velvet bag, with gold tassels and 
strings in her hand, to receive the offerings of the charitable. 
The church was densely crowded, and they were obliged to push 
their way from chair to chair, as only a French lady knows 
how, through the numberless knees that intercepted their pro- 
gress. There were moments when I thought that even they 
considered their philanthropy sorely tested. They persevered, 
however, each taking a section, leaving no person unvisited. 
They then stationed themselves at the gates of the nave, and 
the doors of the church, kneeling on " Prie-dieu," so that every 
one was compelled to run the gauntlet of their charitable plead- 
ings, and the still more irresistible language of their lovely eyes, 
for the third time. These successive depletions, joined to the 
original one of a franc for a seat, upon entrance, lightened most 
purses very considerably. Besides the pleasure of bestowing 
charity through so fair a medium, three hundred and fifty of the 
best musicians of Paris, executed a musical mass of Haydn's in 
a manner worthy of the author. 

Near the doors of most of the churches there are placed a 
kind of sentry-box with seats, closed in front by a sort of desk. 
In them sit the day long, with a patience that reminded me of 
the hermit crab, while they themselves looked like venerable 
rats peering from their holes, the smallest, grayest, wrinklcdest 
specimens of the human species now extant. Indeed to the mat) 



78 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 




TOUPET HOLDER. 



of the street they bear about the same resemblance that dried 
and pressed plants do to the fresh and 
verdant. The oldest of our revolu- 
tionary fathers would appear like a 
stripling beside them. If Barnum 
wants a male "Joice Heath," I rec- 
ommend to him to select from these 
antediluvians. Their sole duty is to 
hold out to the faithful the " toupet" 
or brush, which is dipped into holy 
water. A little American girl in ask- 
ing me its name and use, graphically 
described it "as a thing with hairs 
sticking out in the end of it, which 
every body felt of as they went by." 
There are in Paris forty-eight churches, all belonging to the 
government. A church like the Madeleine has about sixty in- 
dividuals attached to its service. They consist of a cure, vicars, 
deacons, sub-deacons, chanters, wardens, sacristan, beadles, 
Suisse, children of the altar, and choristers. The Archbishop 
appoints the cures to the several churches. They are selected 
from the oldest vicars, and have control of all matters in their 
parish. 

The Roman hierarchy has as many ranks and as rigid a sys- 
tem of discipline as the army. The total of Catholic clergy in 
France is about forty-two thousand, beside eight thousand five 
hundred theological students in the different colleges. There 
are fifteen archbishops, sixty-five bishops, one hundred and sev- 
enty-six vicars-general, six hundred and sixty-one canons, three 
thousand three hundred and one curates, and twenty-eight thou- 
sand eight hundred and one priests. These last, who belong to 
the " eglises succursales" (chapels of ease), are poorly paid, 
indeed, compared with the Protestant clergy of England and 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PPvJNCTPLF.S. 71) 



America, the incomes of their Frencli brethren are very pmall 
The Archbishop of Paris has $8000 per annum ; the other 
archbishops, little less than $3000 ; the bishops, $2000 ; cures, 
from $250 to $1000 ; the vicars, $200 ; and subordinates in 
proportion. These incomes are augmented by the fees arising 
from occasional ceremonies. In Paris for a grand marriage the 
cure receives $5; each vicar, $1-50; the beadle, $1; and the 
other assistants according to their ranks. Louis Napoleon has 
increased the stipends of the superior clergy about one third, by 
which the budget for 1853 gives 3,000,000 francs more for Pub- 
He Worship than that of 1852, which amounted to 41,000,000. 

The churches enjoy also a prolific source of revenue, from 
the ceremonies which their creed makes incumbent on all believ- 
ers who would shorten their stay in purgatory, or be considered 
as zealous for the faith. The price of a grand mass varies from 
$10 to $60, according to its splendor; a low mass, which con- 
sists solely of silent worship before the altar, can be had as cheaj) 
as 15 cents ; funeral services, from $4 to $40 ; marriages, $3 
to $40 ; a grand marriage made at the high altar, with carpets, 
gilt arm-chairs, choir, &c., costs from $40 to $60. What re- 
mains of these receipts after the apportioned division among the 
clergy and assistants, is deposited in the church treasury, to de- 
fray the expenses of robes, ornaments, and candles. For the 
last, the rich ladies of the parish contribute liberally. The 
burning of candles must be considered as particularly efficacious 
in cleansing from sin, if a judgment can be formed from the 
numbers offered and consumed before the different altars by the 
devout women, for it is rarely that a man expends a " sous" for 
this purpose. In each church there is a " magasin" of these 
commodities under the charge of a woman, who has before her a 
sort of triangular iron frame with points, on which the ligliled 
candles are placed. The shrine oi" the patron saint of Paris, St. 
Genevieve, in the Church of St Etienne du Mont, is kept con- 



8U PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

stantly illuminated, and generally there are to be seen persons 
of both sexes praying before her tomb. 

Collections are taken every Sunday for the poor, and to sup- 
port the church. Baptisms, absolutions, and extreme unction are 
administered gratis. The finances and books are in the charge 
of "fabriciens" or trustees: generally six of the oldest and 
wealthiest members of the parish, chosen by the parishioners at 
large. They have a seat of honor fronting the pulpit, inclosed 
like one of our pews, richly cushioned and slightly elevated above 
the other worshipers. There are two ranges of seats in this 
stall, on the lower of which the clergy sit during sermon time. 
The total cost of the Catholic clergy of France is estimated at 
$7,260,000 per annum. Before the revolution of 1789 it was 
$28,000,000. The government gives in aid of their worship pro- 
portionally to the Protestants and Jews ; to the former about 
$260,000, and to the latter $22,000. There are six hundred 
and forty one Calvinist and Lutheran ministers, forty of the Church 
of England, eighty-six of other denominations, and eight Grand 
Rabbins. 

Architecture and the decorative arts are largely indebted to 
the Catholic church. Henry VII. 's Chapel at Westminster is 
justly considered a fine specimen of florid Gothic architecture, but 
the gem of this style is the Sainte Chapelle, erected by St. Louis 
in 1245-8. To visit this chapel a written permission from the 
Minister of Public Works is required ; but on two occasions I 
found a " douceur" equally as efl[icacious to the gentlemanly officer 
who had it in charge, and who informs visitors of its history. I 
should not have known this fact, however, if it had not been for 
a man in a blouse, who, as I was gazing at the exterior with a 
look of raw admiration that told the stranger, inquired if Mon- 
sieur would like to go in. Upon my informing him I was minus 
the indispensable billet, he gave me some mysterious directions 
as to what course to pursue, to elevate the "complaisance" of 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 81 



the door-keeper to the point necessary to allow me to speak a few 
words to Monsieur his superior within. Once within, a franc is 
as good as the signature of the Minister, and when out, a few 
sous sent my informant on his way rejoicing, to waylay another 
greenhorn. There seems to be an unaccountable itching in our 
nature to see what, in nine cases out of ten, is not worth seeing, 
if it be forbidden. I have seen five francs open the doors of the 
Chapel of the Invalides, where the only recompense is a mass of 
stone and masonry in process of being wrought into the most mag- 
nificent tomb in Europe, but which at present scarcely proclaims 
what it will be. The Sainte Chapelle, like all gems of art, to be 
described must be seen. Neither dimensions, technical terms, nor 
the cost added, give any adequate idea of beautiful structures. 
A landscape may be described, because the general beauties of 
nature are familiar to all ; but a description in which to be ex- 
act, crocheted gables, tripartite archings, and perforated spandrels 
must figure, would be like the attempt to convey the idea of 
the beauty of the loveliest flowers by a repetition of their scientific 
nomenclature. 

Near the altar is a side chapel with a small window, accessi- 
ble only from below. In this chapel that amiable sovereign Louis 
XI. said his prayers in fear and trembling, lest even the defense 
of stone and mortar should not prevent an assassin from getting 
in his rear and destroying him in sight of the very relics, among 
which was a piece of the true cross and the crown of thorns, which 
this chapel was built to hold. These relics cost St. Louis enough 
to be authentic. They are now deposited at Notre Dame. I in- 
quired of the faithful guardian of the Chapelle if they were visi- 
ble. He sagely replied, he really did not know, but added with 
a smile that savored of five franc pieces, if the proper means 
were pursued, he really had no doubt that that pleasure could be 
had. 

Externally, Notre Dame is the most beautiful ecclesiastical 



82 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCirLES. 



structure in Paris. Internally, it is gloomy and simple to a fault. 
The reverse is true of St. Eustache, where the exterior is an odd 
medley of various styles of Gothic and Grecian architecture, incrust- 
ed in part on two sides with old buildings, giving it the appearance 
of a beautiful shell disfigured with barnacles. The northern 
doorway of the transept is magnificent, but to my mind the piu- 




NOTKE DAME. 



portions and character of its interior harmonize far better with 
the spirit of Christian worship, than the gorgeous splendor which 
characterizes the churches of Madeleine and Notre Dame de 
Lorette. A French writer says of the latter, that it is M^orthy of 
the incredulous and sensual age that constructed it, where the 
worst taste is shovv^n equally in the tout ensemble as in the details, 
where one finds pictures of Saints in the postures of prostitutes, 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES 



S3 



and where are heaped together the furniture of a cofiee-house, 
the seductions of a theatre, and the blandishments of haunts of 
dissipation ; it is a sort of appendage to the opera, of which it is 
the parish : a boudoir worthy of the quarter, and whicli has had 
the honor to give its name to the grisettes of its neighborhood. 
This may be too severe, but it needs but a glance at the mere- 
tricious character of its decorations to make the visitor fear that 
he has mistaken an opera-house Ibr a church. In keeping witii 
the character in this respect, it is said to be, by excellence, the 
church where the vain and beautiful most do congregate to ex- 
hibit themselves and their newest fashions. 




THE MADELEINE AND THE BOULEVARDS 



St. Yincent de Paule partakes somewhat of this glitter of 
gold, but in better taste. The roof is very beautiful. The most 
curious church in Paris is St. Etienne du Mont, in which are 
beautifully blended the Gothic style, and that of the revival of 
the arts. Its stained glass and magnificent rood-loft, a chef- 



84 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



d'ceuvre of lightness and delicacy, attract crowds of visitors. 
But the church on which modern art has exhausted its genius, 
is the Madeleine. Situated on one of the most commanding 
positions of Paris, the stranger of but a day is sure to see it. 
Externally it is the Parthenon, but to rival that edifice, it re- 
quires the purer material and clearer sky, as well as the match- 
less sculpture of its Athenian prototype. It is strictly a temple, 
but neither in plan nor finish adapted to the simplicity of Chris- 
tianity. It should have been, as Napoleon contemplated, dedi- 
cated to the mihtary glories of France. Then, the luxuriance 
and perfection of its decorations, harmonizing with its design, it 
would have been viewed as a specimen of the wealth and re- 
sources of art of the first military nation of modern times, appro- 
priately devoted to perpetuating the memory of the achieve- 
ments of those who have won fame for themselves and their 
country. As it exists, it is an incongruous Museum of sculpture 
and painting, so combined that all sense of the sacredness of the 
objects is merged into admiration of the skill that executed them, 
while the display of gilding and velvet, recalls rather the attrac- 
tions of an opera and the luxury of a palace, than the mysteries 
of faith. The greatest admirer of Napoleon would scarcely have 
claimed for him the most conspicuous position in the decorations 
of a Christian church, putting into shade, by the splendor of his 
imperial robes, the gilded glories of the second person in the 
Godhead and the Virgin Mother. 

Six beautiful paintings on the tympans of the lateral arches 
above the chapels illustrate events in the life of Mary Magdalen. 
The southern end of the church is surmounted by the largest 
sculptural pediment in existence. In the centre is the figure of 
Christ, eighteen feet in height, and at his feet, in an attitude of 
suppliant penitence, is the Magdalen. Other figures, represent- 
ing the virtues and vices, fill the remaining space. The bronze 
doors in front are thirty-three feet high by sixteen and a half 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 85 

wide, barely inferior in size to those of St. Peter's at Rome. 
They are divided into ten compartments, illustrating subjects 
from the Old Testament. The most beautiful object, and wor- 
thy of a place in any Christian temple, is the delicately sculp- 
tured high altar, containing the feast of Cana in bas-relief. It 
is surrounded by a group of the size of life in spotless marble, of 
Magdalen borne to heaven by attendant angels. On either side 
is an archangel in the attitude of prayer. These figures, so ex- 
quisitely wrought, so pure in conception, and so appropriate in 
design, atone, in some degree, for the incongruity displayed in 
the other decorations of the edifice. 

But neither by association nor shape is a Grecian temple 
adapted for a Christian house of worship. Christianity, new to 
the world in spirit and doctrine, required to model for itself its 
sacred edifices. The middle ages have given us the specimens 
best suited to its grave yet hopeful character. Architects, hav- 
ing since traveled through a cycle of unsatisfactory novelties, are 
now rapidly returning for their models to that genius which 
produced those matchless samples of Gothic architecture, that 
still remain the pride and delight of Europe. For myself, the 
simple steeple of a New England meeting-house, or the antique 
belfry of one of the village churches of France, gives rise to emo- 
tions far more consonant with the spiritual wants of the soul 
than the Madeleine and its sister edifices, with their untold 
wealth lavished in displaying rather the pride of man than the 
glory of God. 

To those who love to witness the different forms in which 
bereavement seeks consolation, it is worth their while to visit 
the Chapel of St. Ferdinand, erected on the spot of the death 
of the Duke of Orleans, July 13th, 1842. It is on the road to 
Neuilly, and but a short walk from the Arch of Triumph. The 
building is small, fifty feet long by twenty in height, in the form 
of a mausoleum. It contains touching memorials of the sad 



86 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



scene, placed there by the bereaved family. On the altar, dedi- 
cated to St. Ferdinand, is a marble group representing the Prince 
on his death-bed, with an angel kneeling at his head, imploring 
the divine compassion on the sufferer. The angel of this beau- 
tiful group was the work of his sister, the Princess Marie, who, 
when she wrought it, little thought her hands were carving the 
monument of a brother. There is also a painting of the death 
scene. The unconscious prince painfully gasping away his life, 
is watched in mute grief by his father and mother, near whom 
are the Princess Clementine, his brothers Aumale and Montpen- 
sier, Marshals Soult and Gerard, and the Cure of Mery. Low 
oaken presses, a confessional, a chair and prayer desk, all cover- 
ed with black, and an ivory crucifix, give a painful reality to 
this hour of mourning. A clock in an adjoining room perpetu- 
ally marks ten minutes past four, the time of the duke's death. 
Another represents in bronze, France grief-stricken, leaning over 
a broken column, while the hand stands arrested at ten minutes 
before noon, the moment of the accident. In the court-yard is a 
cedar tree brought from Lebanon by the Duke of Orleans, and 
planted by his son, the Count of Paris. Now that the fortune 
of politics forbids, except the dead alone, of this family to remain 
in their native land, this monument possesses an increased in- 
terest. 

In the Rue d'Anjou St. Honore, we find the Chapelle Expia- 
toire, a beautiful and appropriate memento of the more misera- 
ble fate of the elder Bourbons. It is erected upon the site of the 
graves of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, who were here ob- 
scurely buried immediately after their execution. If it had not 
been for the faithful care of M. Descloseaux, their remains 
would have been mingled and lost among the crowd of other 
victims of the Revolution who were here interred, includhig the 
Swiss guards, and by a just retribution, little foreseen, many of 
their enemies also. Danton, Hebert and Robespierre, were here 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 87 



obscurely and unceremoniously buried. Strange mingling of 
dust I Swept away in the vortex of the storm they knew how 
to raise but not to direct, they found only in death that '' egalite" 
M'hich was the mockery of their lives. I know no more touch- 
ing comment upon the misfortunes of the mistress of Versailles, 
than the simple cash entiy made by the sexton, yet to be seen 
in the parish records of the Madeleine, "Paid seven francs for a 
coffin for the widow Capet." Her remains and those of the 
king were transported to St. Denis in 1815, by Louis XVIII. 
The exact spots whence they were taken are shown. Mass, for 
the repose of their souls, is performed here daily. 

If the arts have gained by the lavish expenditures of the 
Catholics in their places of worship, it may be questioned 
whether the true interests of religion have not proportionally suf- 
fered. Magnificent temples proclaim the genius of man, but do 
they fulfill the true intents and purposes of that religion which 
was to exhibit itself in visiting and consoling the widows and 
fatherless in their affliction ? Far be it from me to condemn 
the desire to glorify God by the dedication to him of the proud- 
est works of man. But it becomes a question, whether the 
means are adapted to the end. While immense sums are ex- 
pended on the building, we find not only the spiritual but the 
temporal wants of the worshipers and clergy neglected. The 
salaries of the latter are notoriously low, and no one will suppose 
that forty-eight Catholic churches are adequate to the wants of 
a city like Paris. Their congregations are larger since the 
cholera, but having attended various churches punctually for 
several months, both at morning and evening services, I am 
satisfied that although they are comparatively as well filled as 
Protestant churches in the United States, yet five hundred to 
each would be a fair average of worshipers who remain during 
the entire service. I do not include the crowd that is to be 
seen continually entering and leaving, nfter carelessly cros.«ing 



88 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND TRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

themselves and bowing before the altar. Allowing these five 
hundred to be changed entirely at morning and evening serv- 
ices, we have less than fifty thousand worshipers each Sunday, 
out of a population of upward of a million. It must be consid- 
ered, however, that the Catholic churches are open daily, and 
that the entire population have the opportunity to hear mass 
during the week if they see fit But for the regular service of 
the Sabbath, with a sermon, certainly not more than one twen- 
tieth of the Catholic population of Paris are provided. This re- 
sults from concentrating magnificence on a few churches instead 
of building more and plainer for the actual accommodation of 
the people. The Madeleine cost $2,615,800, and can accom- 
modate not over one thousand persons within hearing distance of 
the pulpit, though more can witness the ceremonies. $5,000,000 
have been expended on the Pantheon, and the result is an archi- 
tectural monument which one knows not whether most to con- 
demn or admire. Useless as a church, it serves to mark the 
spot where repose the ashes of Voltaire and Rousseau, either of 
whom, deists though they were, lies with more consistency 
within the walls of a Christian edifice than does the infamous 
Cardinal Dubois, a man who pursued his career on principles 
of avowed villainy, mocking alike at virtue and religion in every 
form, v/hen hypocrisy would not serve him better. The holy 
Catholic Church found place for his remains in the same edifice 
that contains the ashes of the father of the deaf and dumb, the 
Abbe de I'Epee — the church of St. Roch — and that too in an 
age when it refused a Christian burial to Adrienne Le Couvreur, 
on the ground that she was an actress. But, as the lapse of a 
century leaves but little to be desired on the score of religious 
liberty in France, I will return to my comparison between the 
results of the economy of the Protestants and the prodigality of 
the Catholics in their sacred edifices. Boston, with its one hun- 
dred thousand inhabitants, has more churches than Paris with 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 89 

its one million, and all of its churches combined have not cost 
more than one half the sum spent on the Pantheon alone. Con- 
sider the different results ! The Pantheon exists as a proud 
monument of national architecture ; lifeless as its own naked 
vaults ; useful only thus far in demonstrating from its dome, by 
means of the pendulum, the rotary motion of the earth. Yet 
not useless as a w^arning souvenir through all time, of the folly 
of reason placing itself above revealed religion. It was here 
that took place the apotheosis of Marat, under the auspices of 
the painter David. The heart of this monster was inclosed in 
an agate vase, and placed upon a civic altar. The high priest 
of reason, dressed in red, recited the following apostrophe : — " Oh 
heart of Marat I sacred heart and adorable bowel I hast thou not 
as much right to the religious homage of the affranchised French, 
as the heart of Jesus had formerly to the adoration of the fanat- 
ical Nazarenes ? The labors and philanthropy of the son of 
Mary, can they be compared to those of the friend of the people 
and his apostles, to the Jacobins of our holy Montague — the 
pharisees to the aristocrats, and the publicans to the bankers? 
Their Jesus was only a prophet, and Marat is a God. Live the 
heart of Marat — but what say I ? It has become cold dust — 
Marat I" Such was the substitute reason offered for " Glory 
to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good-will to man- 
kind." 

Who can correctly estimate the extent of the religious influ- 
ences of the Christian churches of Boston ! Destroy them and 
substitute a Pantheon, and the void would be felt in the moral 
reaction, not only throughout New England, but from one end 
of the Union to the other. The religious education of the 
Americans is at the bottom of their republicanism. Pantheons, 
Madeleines, and a ceremonial heirarchy may gratify the taste 
of a people for magnificence, but they are a poor substitute for 
the Bread of Life. 



CHAPTER V. 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 



There are no Roman Catholic Sunday Schools. The near- 
est approach to them is that, during four months of the year, 
children of twelve or thirteen, are expected to pass an hour each 
Sunday in the church to be instructed in their catechism, which 
teaches them there is no salvation out of the pale of their creed. 

I have before me the " Alphabet Chretien, ou Reglement 
pour les Enfans a I'llsage des Ecoles Chretiennes," a little book 
from which the children of France are taught the first principles 
of religion. The following extracts, turned into English, will 
show to Protestant parents the points of difference between this 
and the catechisms they place in the hands of their children. 
The confession of sins reads thus : "I confess to God all power- 
ful, the very happy Mary, always virgin, to St. Michael Arch- 
angel, to St. John Baptist, to the Apostles St. Peter and St. 
Paul, to all the saints, and to you, my Father, that I have 
greatly sinned, by thoughts, words, actions, and by omissions ; 
it is my fault ; it is my fault ; it is my very great fault. It is 
why I pray the very happy Mary, always virgin, St. Michael 
Archangel, St. John Baptist, the Apostles St. Peter, St. Paul, 
all the saints, and you, my Father, to pray for me, to the Lord, 
our God." Confession and communion are enjoined at least 
once a year. Two years' study at the catechism is required, 
previous to the first communion. The young girls dress all in 
white at this sacrament. The reason given for the invocation 
of the saints, is, " because they can greatly aid us by their inter- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 91 

cession." Children are advised, whenever they drink, " to pro- 
nounce inM^ardly the holy name of Jesus ;" " every time you 
name or hear named Jesus or Mary, you should make a respect- 
ful inclination ;" " when you pass before any cross or any image 
of the Lord, or of the very Holy Virgin, or of the Saints, make 
a respectful how." The Act of Faith, reads, " My God, I be- 
lieve firmly all that the holy Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman 
Church orders me to believe." " Outside of the church there is 
no safety. Thus all those who do not belong to the church or 
do not obey it, will be damned. The church is composed of the 
Saints who are in heaven, the souls which are in purgatory, and 
the Faithful Avho are on earth ; we participate in the merits of 
the Saints and the Faithful, and we can solace the souls in pur- 
gatory by our prayers and by our good works." " All these 
truths are included in the Creed of the Apostles. I believe them 
firmly not only upon the word of the men who announce them, 
but because they are revealed of God himself and taught by the 
church, which is infallible. The church is the Catholic, Apos- 
tolic and Roman. It is necessary to obey those who have the 
government by the authority of Jesus Christ ; these are the 
Bishops, and especially our Holy Father, the Pope, who, as 
chief successor of St. Peter and Vicar of Jesus Christ, has au- 
thority over all the Faithful." 

" The Eucharist is the most august of all the Sacraments, 
because it contains Jesus Christ all entire, true God and true 
man, his body and his blood, his soul, his divinity ; at the Mass, 
by the words of the consecration that the Priest pronounces, the 
substance of the bread and the wine is changed to the body of 
Jesus Christ, and there remains only of it the appearances. 
Thus, when the Holy Sacrament is exposed upon the Altar, or 
when it is in the Tabernacle, it is Jesus Christ really present 
that is adored ; and when we commune, it is Jesus Christ that 
we receive to be the spiritual nourishment of the soul. It is not 



92 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



his image nor his form, as upon a cross ; but it is Jesus Christ 
himself — that is to say, the Son of God, the same Jesus Christ 
who is born of the very Holy Virgin Mary, who is dead for us 
upon the cross, who is raised, ascended to heaven — who is as 
really in the Holy Host, as in heaven." 

Here in a nutshell are the contested points of faith between 
the Catholics and Protestants. I quote them because prejudice 
too often throws the controversialist wide from truth, especially 
where, as in the Roman Catholic Church, ceremonies and splen- 
dor are apt to vail the simple truths which lie at the bottom. 
With these exceptions, there is nothing perhaps which any Trin- 
itarian would not subscribe to, in the " Alphabet Chretien," 
which contains all " it is necessary to know, believe and practice 
to be saved." In passing judgment upon the religion of a nation, 
it is of the first importance to know what it believes. Outward 
observances have their origin in other causes beside faith. They 
often spring from, or are modified by necessity, expediency, or 
the prejudices or the genius of a people. 

In its infancy, Christianity, true to the principles of its Founder 
struggled with paganism, until, by the blood of martyrs, its 
eternal truths found their way to the throne of the Roman 
Empire. Then, assuming the form of Papacy, it welcomed to 
its arms Pagan Europe. Instead of a pure and rigid faith, it 
became an inflexible creed and mighty ceremonial. Paganism, 
but half weaned from its errors, was received into its bosom. 
The unnatural embrace has left its traces even upon this age, in 
ceremonies and fetes which have their origin far into remote 
heathenism, and in a deference to usages which, if the church 
refuses to sanction, its policy permits. Catholicism, corrupted 
by its victories, but relentless in its animosities, has been obliged 
to renew its strength at different epochs of its history, by a par- 
tial plunge in the pure spring whence it arose, rewarding those 
who would wash it clean, with ignominy and death. At the 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 93 

present time, the Catholic Church of France is the most enlight- 
ened and sincere of Europe. In its day of strength it dealt exile 
and death to reformers. Battening on its spoils, it experienced 
the fate of all powers that permit inglorious ease to succeed the 
virtues that were their earliest nurture, and became sensual and 
corrupt. Then, indignant humanity gave birth to a philosophy 
which, while in its cradle, well-nigh strangled the Church of 
Rome. This philosophy, flashing its uncertain light for a mo- 
ment over France, drove Catholicism in afliright from its territory. 
But born of man and owning no divinity except reason, it lacked 
soil to sustain its growth. The Roman Church, strong in the 
contests and victories of fifteen centuries, stronger yet in having 
its foundations in the most sacred principles of the human heart, 
principles coeval with Adam, has returned to its post strengthen- 
ed and improved. How much more powerful for good it would 
be if its reforms were not always begotten of necessities ! Until 
the work of its own purification is accomplished, the ritual re- 
duced to its primitive simplicity, and the creed to the standard 
of its origin, the church will continue to be false to itself and to 
its laission. 

France is nominally Catholic, but indifi^erence or deism are the 
prevailing sentiments. This, or ignorance, must ever be the case, 
while the wealth of a church is chiefly expended in fostering the 
arts, and the labors of the clergy wasted in a ceremonial worship. 

I do not desire by these remarks to give offense to any con- 
science. But that I am correct in the opinion that the eflbrts 
of the Catholic clergy are more directed to gratify the senses, 
than to purify the heart, those who examine their churches and 
witness their festivals will not deny. The people, educated to 
this show, estimate a church in proportion to its wealth and 
ornaments. The greater the attraction for the eye, the larger 
the congregation. St. Roch, during the recent fete of the Very 
Holy Sacrament, has been crowded with spectators to witness 



94 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

the elaborate decorations of the high altar. With its countless can- 
dles, rich velvet hangings, and profusion of flowers, it was indeed 
a beautiful sight. The maidens clothed and vailed in white, 
bowing in adoration before the sacred symbols, added greatly to 
the effect. But that nothing be wanting to perfect the spectacle, 
music, that is renowned even in Paris, lends its strains. The 
leader of the choir, Alexis Dupont, has a salary of 10,000 francs. 
Some came to pray ; many because it is the rule of the church ; 
but the mass, as spectators. For my own part, setting aside the 
respect due to all houses of worship, I should be perplexed to 
decide whether High Mass at the Madeleine or an Opera gives 
ijie the most pleasure. In either case, the eye and ear are 
ravished by the combinations of external beauty with the har- 
mony of sound and the grace of action. Where early training 
has made this an indispensable accompaniment of religion, the 
heart, perhaps, is enabled through all this sensual crust to reach 
Him who is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. But that 
the clerg}^ here find it politic to add to even these attractions, is 
evident from a notice I read in the Madeleine on the occasion of 
the fete above mentioned, promising plenary indulgence to all 
who would join in the solemn procession, and stating, as the ex- 
hibition of the Very Holy Sacrament required a more brilliant 
light, the members of the parish were requested to contribute to 
its expense. 

The Bible is a rare book in France, and works on religion and 
moral education, so common in the United States, comparatively 
unknown. The writings, however, of Voltaire, Rousseau, and 
Volney, are to be met every where and in every variety of 
editions. I speak from a careful inspection of the bookstores 
and stalls of Paris. French literature is prolific in works of 
science, wit, and amusement ; in journalism and memoirs it is 
imexcelled ; but the Abbotts for youth and Taylors for adults 
are yet to arise. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PRINCIPLES. 95 



Chateaubriand, Lamartiiic, and other writers of their stamp, 
who have treated of rehgious topics, have attempted rather to 
poetize and refine upon the spiritual sentiments than to place 
before their readers religious truth practically applied to the 
actual character and condition of man. The cause of this lies 
undoubtedly in one of the elements of French character. They 
aim to decorate what they touch. They possess a keen sense of 
the beautiful in art, and the nicest relish for what the English 
tongue has no synonym, the " spirituelle," whether in conversa- 
tion or literature. The term "spirituelle," can only be defined 
as the fragrance of the mind — an incorporeal essence felt, but 
not to be grasped ; a flashing of an idea like the glimpse of an 
angel's wings, or the perpetually recurring brilliancy of the fire- 
fly, sparkling a new beauty before the last has dimmed on the 
sight, or it can be told whence it was or whither it has gone. 

There is another element, in which wit and irreligion are 
equally blended. It justifies the common saying, that a French- 
man fears neither God, man, nor the devil. At all events, he 
had rather fail in his respect for the first than to lose his point. 
What other nation would have dramatized the Fall of Man ? It 
is not two years and a half since there was brought out at the 
Vaudeville a piece called " La Propriete c'est un Vol." — (Property 
is a Robbery.) The scene is laid in the Garden of Eden. Satan is- 
tempting Eve to pluck and eat from the prohibited trees, on which 
is the "afliche" or notice "it is forbidden to take this fruit." 
Eve says to Satan, " Do you not see that I am commanded to let 
it alone ?" " Eat," he replies, " and you will possess and know 
every thing." Eve, at these words, rushes up to the tree, and 
plucks the fruit, exclaiming, " Je m'en fiche de I'afflche " — equiv- 
alent to, I do not care a fig, or something more profane, for 
the notice. The wit Ues in the pun, which is not to be turned 
into our tongue. Soon after a celestial voice is heard, ordering 
Adam and Eve to leave the garden. They run ofT, snatching 



96 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

more of the apples as they go. The new and magnificent Opera 
of the " Wandering Jew " represents the Day of Judgment, raising 
of the dead from their graves, and heaven and hell, with the fiends 
tormenting the damned ; all got up on a most effective scale. 

A French engraving depicts the Devil poking over the earth 
with a stick, stirring up all manner of trouble, while the Almighty, 
in the shape of an old man with a white cotton cap on his head, 
is watching him through a spy-glass. 

When the government shut up the cemetery of Saint Medard, 
on account of the pretended miracles of the Jansenists at the 
tomb of the Deacon Paris, a wag placed upon the door this verse • 

" De par le roi, defense a Dieu 
De faire miracle en ce lieu." 

In plain English, The king forbids God to work any miracle m 
this place. 

In the Rue St. Jacques there formerly existed a chapel of Saint 
Yves, the patron saint of lawyers, though on what grounds he at- 
tained this honor, has not been discovered. Our authority says, 
that the lawyers, without pretending to imitate his disinterested- 
ness, and without being ambitious of the honors of the kingdom 
of heaven, contented themselves very humbly with the goods of 
this world. He contrives maliciously to add, that when Saint 
Yves presented himselfat the gates of Paradise, St. Peter repulsed 
him, confounding him with the rest of his profession. The Saint 
hid himself in the crowd, and managed to slip in. Being recog- 
nized, St. Peter wished to drive him out, but he resisted and said 
he would not leave until he had been notified so to do by an 
" huissier" (door-keeper in French courts of law). St. Peter was 
embarrassed, and searched every where for one, but as one had 
never entered Paradise his search was in vain, and St. Yves re- 
mained among the elect, to the great confusion of St. Peter. 

The Egyptian Saint Mary had a chapel in the Hue Montmar- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 97 

tre, the stained glass windows of which represented the events 
of her life. One of these was not of the most exemplary charac- 
ter. Beneath, it bore this inscription, " Comment la Sainte offrit 
son corps au batelier pour son passage" (how the Saint offered 
her body to the boatman for her passage). By what process can- 
onization was derived from this event, history fails to inform us. 
By a chance sufficiently bizarre, Madame Dubarry, after the 
death of Louis XV., lived for several years close by this chapel. 

Among the fancy names given the shops, there is one in the 
Rue St. Honore, called " The Infant Jesus," and another in the 
Rue St. Jacques, named " The Sacrifice of Abraham," and in 
the Rue de I'Echelle a dram shop veiy appropriately termed 
•' Fountain of the Devil." 

The irreverence of Frenchmen is not a plant of modern growth. 
When Cardinal Dubois announced to Louis XIV. the death of 
his brother, the Duke of Orleans, the monarch piously exclaimed, 
" I hope my poor brother is in paradise." " Sire," replied Bon- 
temps, "Dieu regarde a deux fois pour condamner des princes," 
" God looks twice before he damns a prince." 

Cariiille Desmoulins, when asked his age by the revolutionary 
tribunal, answered, " Of the same age as that "sans culotte " 
Jesus Christ when he died." 

Visiting one evening a friend in the Faubourg St. Germain, 

the Count De , in describing the crowd at the Madeleine 

to hear the Father Lacordaire's Christmas sermon, said he was 
obliged to stand over the " Grille " (furnace bars) where he was 
roasted, and he had directly in front a chandelier that put his 
eyes out. " Ah I" exclaimed Baron, "your legs were roast- 
ing in hell while your eyes were being dazzled by the bright- 
ness of heaven." 

These gentlemen were of the old noblesse, distinguished at 
the court of Charles X., and stanch Catholics. I quote the jeu 
d'esprit, which it is impossible to do justice to in English, to show 

E 



98 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

that the temptation to this spirit of wit is as irresistible to the 
higher classes as the lower. A successful bon mot on any sub- 
ject establishes a reputation. Earthly powers fare no better than 
heavenly. A bystander lately remarked in witnessing the eras- 
ure by order of the President of the words, " Liberte, Egalite, 
Fraternite," from the national buildings, that he supposed they 
were to be replaced by " Cavalerie, Infanterie, Artillerie." 

The churches themselves have witnessed so many incongruous 
spectacles before their shrines within the last three-quarters of a 
century, that the prestige of their sanctity must be greatly weak- 
ened in the hearts of the present generation. "Witness the Pan- 
theon, from the worship of the true God changed to a monument 
of the deification of man ; polluted by being made the sepulchre 
of Marat, whose remains, soon 3ihei, depantheonizedhj the ssune 
authority that glorified them, found a more appropriate receptacle 
in a common-sewer in the E,ue Montmartre. This church, the 
last survivor of the Temples of Reason, has been lately restored, 
by order of the President, to the Catholic clergy. During the 
first revolution the beautiful edifice of St. Sulpice became the 
Temple of Victory and the place of assembly for the theophilan- 
thropists. In 1799, its sacred walls looked down upon a banquet 
given to Bonaparte. In 1831, Notre Dame and St. Germain I'Aux- 
errois were sacked by one of the tornado mobs, in which Paris has 
been so fruitful. In consequence, the latter remained closed for 
seven years. Were I a Frenchman, I should have wished that 
every vestige of it had been swept from the earth ; for while it 
remains, its sinister-looking walls must remind every stranger of 
the darkest crime with which history is stained. Its belfry 
gave the signal on the eve of the fete of St. Barthelemi for the 
appalling massacre that deluged France in blood, and its bells 
continued to toll during the whole of that awful night. I never 
pass it without an involuntary shudder. In the vicinity, until 
within a few weeks, could be seen the hotel in which Admiral 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 99 

Coligny was murdered. It has been taken down to enlarge the 
street. 

The Marquis de la Grange, in his " Memoires de la Force," 
gives the relation of the miraculous escape on that night of the 
youngest of that family as told by himself. " The father walked 
first, the eldest son next, and the youngest in the rear. Having 
arrived at the end of the Rue des Petits Champs, near the ram- 
part, the soldiers cried, Kill I kill I They first stabbed the eldest 
boy, who in falling, cried, Ah I my God. I am dead I The 
father, turning toward his son, was also stabbed ; the youngest 
covered with blood, but who, by a miracle, had not been wound- 
ed, as if inspired by Heaven, cried out I am dead I at the same 
time falling between his father and brother, who prostrate re- 
ceived several more stabs, while he had not even his skin grazed. 
God protected him so visibly, that when the murderers stripped 
them all to their skin, they did not perceive that he had not even 
a single wound. As they believed their work finished, they went 
off, saying, they had done for the three. The young Caumont 
remained naked as he was until toward four o'clock, when the 
neighbors, attracted by curiosity, or to plunder what the butchers 
might have left, examined the corpses. A tennis-marker, of the 
Rue Verdelet, wishing to take a linen stocking which still re- 
mained on one leg, turned him over, as his face was toward the 
earth, and seeing him so young, said to himself, Alas I it is only 
a poor child. Is not this a great wrong ? What evil can he 
have done ? Caumont hearing this, gently raised his head and 
said in a whisper, ' I am not dead, I beg you to save my life.' 
The marker immediately put his hand on his head and said, Do 
not move — they are still about here. He then walked about 
for a little time and returned and told him to rise, for they were 
gone. He threw over his shoulders a filthy cloak and feigning 
to strike him, he made him walk before him. Who have you 
there ? asked his neighbors. It is my nephew who is drunk, 



100 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

and I shall whip him soundly, replied the marker. In this way- 
he got him safely to his house." 

A gentleman who resides in the quarter referred to, related to 
me the following incident, as showing the relative effects upon 
the value of property in Paris, by the erection of theatres or 
churches. 

The government some years since, wishing to improve the 
vacant land now comprising one of the finest and most populous 
quarters of the city, proposed erecting churches thereon, to at- 
tract to it other enterprises. It was represented to them that to 
build churches would defeat their project, but if theatres were 
substituted, there would be no doubt of a favorable result. Sev- 
eral were soon built, and it has in consequence grown into the 
present magnificent Boulevard du Temple. The friend who 
told me this is so sensitive a Catholic, that he declined reading 
a history of the Popes, for fear he should learn something to 
lessen his good opinion of the heads of his church, "For," said 
he, " it is better not to know than to hate." 

The Catholics condemn servile labor on Sunday, but admit 
that which appertains to the mind and amusements. The 
result in Paris, is, that about a third of the shops are closed on 
that day, and the Parisian world devotes itself to pleasure. Of 
late the Minister of the Interior has discountenanced labor on 
the public works on Sunday ; but it is common for workmen to 
be employed on private enterprises. 

On this day Paris disgorges its population upon the Boulevards, 
the Champs Elysees, Bois du Boulogne, public gardens, and 
museums. The throng is interminable, but a more orderly, hap- 
pier looking and better dressed crowd is nowhere to be seen. 
The working faubourgs send their population outside the barrier. 
In fine weather the Champs Elysees present the appearance 
of a fair. Every species of jugglery, Punch and Judy, concerts 
and dog shows, booths, games, and mountebank tricks are in full 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 101 



*fci-,r!^'5MS)t^ 




CHAMPS ELYSEES. — FETE SUNDAY 



blast, and each becomes the centre of a curious circle. The roll 
of carriages and pleasure vehicles is incessant. Paris dines "en 
ville," or in other words, as pleasure is a part of a Frenchman's 
creed and he is fond of good eating, he dines on that day with 
his family or friends at a restaurant, takes his coffee and brandy 
in the open air or on the sidewalk in front, and passes the even- 
ing at some theatre or ball. However remiss he may be at mass, 
this part of his religion is never neglected. 

The government encourage this mode of its observance by 
selecting it for grand reviews, races, launches, and whatever can 
add to the already seemingly superabundant sources of amuse- 
ment. The grand waters at St. Cloud and Versailles play on 
Sunday, and the throng of people on the excursion trains of the 



102 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

railways is immense. Sunday is taken literally in the sense of 
a day of rest from ordinary work ; consequently a day of liberty 
for what otherwise the necessary labors of the remaining six 
might derange. The elections are then held, but, what appears 
most questionable, Sunday, the 16th of November last, was 
selected for the great lottery of " I'ingot d'or." The question of 
the moral effect of lotteries has of late been agitated here, but it 
did not prevent, in this, the sale of seven million tickets at one 
franc each, indeed most of them at a premium, though the chances 
were but one prize to thirty one thousand two hundred and fifty 
blanks. The government by this operation pocketed about five 
million francs, destined, as it was said, to send emigrants to 
California. The attraction was the grand prize of four hun- 
dred thousand francs. A chamber-maid, I was told, held fif- 
teen hundred tickets, being her entire savings. They all proved 
blanks. 

A Frenchman is as conscientious in defending his manner of 
lieeping the Sabbath as an American would be in condemning 
it, though there are some, even Catholics, who agree with the 
latter. Education makes the difference. As the highest author- 
ity has declared Sunday was made for man, the surest way to 
test the relative merits of the two systems is by the effects on 
national character. The balance of physical happiness, and the 
enjoyment of the senses in works of art, would seem to be in fa- 
vor of France ; but in the acquisition of religious instruction and 
the strengthening of moral principles, the graver course of the 
United States stands out in strong relief. The former renders 
the individual more joyous because less thoughtful — the latter 
more thoughtful and less joyous. The first, like their own cham- 
pagne, sparkles, exhilarates and is gone ; the last, a solid aliment 
for the soul, nourishes strength for the hour of trial. A happy 
combination of the two would temper the one and adorn the 
other. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FEENCH PRINCIPLES. 



103 




MASS AT EIGHT CLOCK. 



The Protestants of the United States can learn two useful les- 
sons from the Catholics of France, in the arrangement of seals 
in the churches, and the manner of preaching. Pews are un- 
known. In lieu of the luxuriously cush- 
ioned stalls of the United States, with 
their elbow-rests and every convenience 
for an easy posture, which, by the way, 
causes more than one half the somnolency 
to be witnessed in our churches, they use 
the simplest kind of chairs. The privilege 
of supplying these chairs is let out annu- 
ally by the church, generally to women, 
who charge each service one sous apiece 
for those outside of the nave and two for 
those within. 

The moral advantages of these chairs are more than at first 

glance would be supposed. 
They preserve that equality 
before God tvithin the church 
wliich is as active a principle 
of the Catholic faith as it is 
dead in the Protestant. Prince 
and peasant, Caucasian and 
African, side by side ofier their 
orisons to their common Father. 
Never by glance or gesture 
have I seen aught to disturb 
this idea of human brother- 
hood, and I have repeatedly 
beheld the blouse kneeling by 
the noble, the femme de cliam- 
bre with her snow-white cap and apron brushing the satin of 
a duchess, and the coal-black negro beside the exquisite of 




MA.SS AT ONE O'CLOCK 



104 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

the Boulevard. All is republicanism and harmony within the 
church. Picture the sensation in any of our Trinity's, St. George's 
or Grace's, should any of the humbler members of society find 
their way into the pews of these churches. No American 
would construe wrongly the remarks and looks which would 
be directed by the proprietors of these pharisaical partitions 
toward those who came thus between the wind and their nobility. 
Pews beget exclusiveness, strengthen artificial distinctions, de- 
prive many of a place of worship, from their expensiveness, and 
make religion with a popular preacher a dear bought luxury. 
Abohsh them, and the equality in law becomes equality in the 
house of God. Those who object to the mixture as it is termed, 
have the example of the highest and most refined of Europe. 
Whoever saw a maid go to church with her mistress in the Uni- 
ted States ? In France it is a constant practice. A preacher 
who expects humility to effect an entrance into a church divided 
into sumptuous and exclusive compartments, the doors of which 
none can enter but those who count their incomes by thousands, 
shows himself deficient in knowledge of human nature. Such 
churches are moral Japans, into which Christians at large 
can not enter. Replace pews by chairs, and each church can 
accommodate twice as many hearers as at present. There 
would be no sleepers. I have never seen a slumberer in a 
French church. 

The average of attention and external devotion is in favor of 
the French congregations, whether Catholic or Protestant. Both 
•use chairs, and in both the preachers deliver their discourses 
without notes. They preach and do not read to their hearers. 
This of itself is Mddely in favor of arresting and fixing the at- 
tention. Is it inferiority of talent or education, that prevents our 
pastors from imitating the example of the apostles in this re- 
spect ? Clergymen or laymen would blush to acknowledge this 
Jact. French sermons are rarely less than an hour longr, and 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 105 

are delivered extempore with more ease than is usual with 
American clergymen who read their essays. Those that I have 
heard, have been in general on the practical duties or common 
elements of the Christian faith, delivered with an earnestness 
that bespoke self-conviction of divine truth. 

The " Confessional" is a tender point with the Catholics of 
France. The most devotional classes are the highest and lowest 
— the well-bred and highly educated legitimists and the igno- 
rant but honest peasantry. Both these extremes of society may 
be said to be attentive to the requirements of the church. The 
great mass of irreligion lies rather between them. Husbands 
frequently forbid their wives to confess. Those who do, go but 
seldom, perhaps but twice a year. I was greatly amused at 
the naivete with which a young lady related to me her experi- 
ence. She had selected for her confessor a pious but somewhat 
indulgent cure, whose humor was often more apparent than 
his severity. " My daughter," said he to her, after she had dis- 
burdened her conscience of a load of trifling omissions and com- 
missions "have you no other sins — little sins — reflect and an- 
swer." " Yes," said she, "I have overlooked one — pardon me — 
I will confess the whole. I was walking with my maid along 
the quay and I heard a noise in the water. I looked and saw 
a number of young men swimming." " What did you do ?" ** I 
put my hand over my eyes," but, said she to me, I did not tell 
him I could see through my fingers. " Ah I beware of idle 
curiosity, my daughter, it will lead you to evil." "But I could 
not help seeing them." "What where your thoughts?" "No- 
thing bad, my father, I assure you." "Be sure now, have you 
no other secret sins ; you come very seldom to confession — 1 
am fearful your memory is treacherous." " No, father, nothing 
more than looking at these boys in the water, which you know 
I could not help. I was so curious to see what was making 
such a splash." " Well my child you must repeat three Pater- 



106 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

Nosters and Ave Marias upon leaving the church, and go and 
sin no more." 

The Calvinists possess four churches and chapels, at which 
seven pastors preach in rotation. The celebrated M. Coquerel, 
and his scarcely less eloquent son, are among them. Theii 
largest church is the ancient Oratoire, Rue St. Honore, ceded to 
their confession in 1802. It has been adapted as far as possible 
to the simplicity of worship of the present occupants, but the 
side-chapels converted into semi-galleries, give it a very awk- 
ward appearance. M. Coquerel was a member of the late Legis- 
lative Assembly, elected jointly by Catholics and Protestants — 
the former having confidence in his politics, though detesting his 
religious principles as a seceder from their ranks. It is a striking 
proof of the perfect equality in the eye of the law of all sects in 
France, that in 1848, M. Cremieux, a Jew, was appointed Min- 
ister of Justice under the Provisional Government. There is no 
charge for chairs at the Lutheran and Calvinist churches, but 
free will offerings for the poor are made at the doors. At the 
Chapel of the English embassy the price is twenty cents a 
seat. 

Among the Catholics, the most celebrated preacher is the 
Jesuit, Le Pere Ventura, who makes an annual visit from Rome 
to preach during lent at Paris. On certain occasions, I am told, 
he officiates only for men, and on others for women. The crowd 
is so great, that even for the gigantic dimensions of Notre Dame 
it is necessary to issue tickets of admission, and to have a military 
guard to prevent accidents from the immense influx of hearers. 
Once, preaching in this church to men alone, he chose for his 
subject the diflerence between divine and human love. Such 
was the power of his eloquence over his excitable auditors, that 
they burst out repeatedly into lively applause. At last, he 
stopped, and remarked, if an action so unbecoming the house of 
God was repeated he should descend from the pulpit. Unable 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 107 



to restrain themselves, his hearers again interrupted him. He 
was as good as his word, and it was with the greatest difficulty 
he could be prevailed to re-enter the pulpit and finish his dis- 
course. In preaching a charity sermon to ladies only, he is said 
to have so excited their sympathies, that they not only emptied 
their purses, but stripped themselves of their jewels, and even 
added their watches to the pile of offerings. 

During the reign of Louis Philippe, another celebrated divine 
commenced a series of discourses upon the vanity and luxury of 
the sex. He made such an impression, that the ladies " en 
masse" began to abandon their ornaments, to study simplicity 
and economy in their dresses, forsake their dissipations, and 
devote themselves to charitable works. To use a theatrical 
phrase, his success was complete, and to be pious became a 
furore. Such was the effect upon the traffic in luxuries on 
which the merchants of Paris subsist, that they represented to 
the Minister of the Interior that they were being ruined, and 
that the commerce of the country was actually suffering, while 
thousands of workmen were starving from want of employment. 
He quietly sent for the reverend father and informed him, that 
although he entertained the highest respect for his talents and 
labors, and believed that vanity and luxury were in themselves 
sins, yet they were the means of livelihood to a large portion of 
his countrymen. Paris was also the dictatress of fashion to the 
civilized world; if the ladies of the "ton" here simplified their 
tastes and studied economy, ladies elsewhere would imitate them. 
By this economy the most productive branches of French indus- 
try would be ruined, for there would be no markets for the silks, 
velvets, ribbons, and bijoux. He concluded by advising the 
orator to travel, until time restored to the ladies their accus- 
tomed tastes. 

At present Le Pere Lacordaire, a Dominican of fifty years of 
age, carries away the palm of clerical oratory. In 1822, he 



108 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

practiced law with success, and was a Voltarian and Deist. 
Two years later he renounced his opinions, entered the Church 
of St. Sulpice, and in 1837 went to Rome, where he took the 
white habit of the order he now wears. His eloquence is 
original, brilliant, vigorous, yet melting. His illustrations are 
striking, and he speaks straightforward to his point. I will 
give a few examples, weakened necessarily by being render- 
ed into English, and unaccompanied by his impressive tone 
and gesture : — " The role of an apostle," says he, " is in effect 
to convert the infidels, the skeptics, of which in the nineteenth 
century we are all more or less. The old serpent of error 
changes his colors in the sun of each century. Thus, while in 
the preaching of proper conduct to those of our own church, 
we do but aim at diversity of style to impress the matter more 
fully on their hearts and imaginations, it is necessary that 
instructive and controversial preaching, pliant as the igno- 
rance it would elevate, subtle as the error it would pierce, 
should imitate their powerful versatility, and combat them 
with never-yielding weapons constantly renewed in the Armory 
of Truth." 

In a funeral oration pronounced upon General Drouot, he gave 
utterance to the following patriotic apostrophe : " All at once, 
even from the heart of the country, there arose a prodigious cry ; 
the descendant of Cyrus and of Csesar, the master of the world, 
had fled before his enemies ; the eagles of the empire returned 
in full flight from the bloody banks of the Dnieper and the Vis- 
tula, and folded their wings upon their native soil to defend it 
from its foes, astonished to clutch in their powerful talons victo- 
ries which won for them only death. God, but God alone, had 
vanquished France, commanded even to the last by genius, and 
triumphant still to the moment that witnessed her fall. I shall 
say nothing upon the causes of this catastrophe. Not only do 
they not belong to my subject, but it is repugnant to a true 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 109 

son to probe so deeply his country's wounds ; and he willingly 
leaves to time alone the care of demonstrating the lessons hidden 
by God in the depths of misfortunes." 

The following, from the same oration, is a picture of domestic 
life, which goes directly to the heart. Speaking of the General, 
he says : " Issue of the people by Christian parents, he early 
saw in the paternal mansion a spectacle which left him neither 
envy of another lot, nor regret for a higher birth ; he witnessed 
order, peace, contentment ; a benevolence which knew how to 
share its resources with the poor ; a faith which, in acknowledg- 
ing every thing as from God, elevated almost to him its sim- 
plicity, generosity and nobleness of soul ; and he learned from 
the joy he tasted himself in the bosom of a position by the world 
judged so humble, that every thing becomes good for the man 
who devotes his life to the work and grandeur of religion. Never 
was the recollection of those cherished days of his youth effaced 
from the memory of General Drouot ; in the glorious smoke of 
battles, at the side even of the man who held all Europe's atten- 
tion, his heart yearned toward the humble mansion that had 
sheltered him, and the virtues of a father and mother which 
were the happiness of his own infancy. Just before his death, 
in comparing the several phases of his career, he wrote, ' I have 
known true happiness only in the obscurity, innocence, and the 
poverty of my early years.' " 

After describing the youth of Drouot, the orator concludes 
thus : " Such was the childhood of which the memory pursued 
the General, even amid the splendors of the Tuileries. You are 
astonished, perhaps, at it ; you ask what charm was there in 
all that? He has told you himself; it was the charm of ob- 
scurity, innocence, and poverty. He grew under the triple guard 
of these strong virtues ; he grew as a child of Sparta and of 
Rome, or better and truer yet to say, he grew as a Christian 
child, in whom the beauty of the natural, and the effusion of 



110 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

the divine grace formed a mysterious feast, which the heart, that 
has once known it, can never forget." 

The preaching of Lacordaire being too democratic for the taste 
of Louis Napoleon, he has been politely exiled, or in other words, 
it has been notified to him that he had better employ the com- 
ing twelve months in visiting the convents of his order through- 
out Europe. 



CHAPTER YL 



SUPERIOR EDUCATION. 



Whatever may be the deficiency of means for primary edu- 
cation in France, in all that appertains to the superior branches 
of knowledge, the government displays the most laudable zeal. 
To individual talent every facility is provided, gratuitously when 
necessary, to attain knowledge and skill in its particular branch. 
Judging from the disproportion of the resources to the wants of 
the population in primary instruction, and those afforded for the 
successful prosecution of all studies connected with the arts and 
sciences, one may be allowed the conclusion, that the govern- 
ment, in education as well as in civil administration fosters the 
principle of centralization. It prefers the more gratifying task 
of educating eminent men, who may add to the literary and 
scientific fame of the nation, to the humbler duty of bringing 
elementary knowledge within the reach of every fireside. It 
concentrates learning as it does power, making Paris the centre 
of each ; the great heart through whose arteries runs the stream 
of knowledge destined to enrich the mind of the world. This 
system is in accordance with the natural love of distinction, 
which cherishes the individual, that he may add to the glories 
of France. The country is the idol to be gilded, and personal 
vanity or ambition find their sweetest triumph in increasing that 
lustre so dear to the hearts of all Frenchmen. 

France has worthily earned her high position in the perfection 
of arts and sciences, by the encouragement and facilities which 



112 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

she furnishes to students of all nations. Her liberality is of no 
selfish character. She aspires to be the Minerva of nations, and 
reaps her reward in the tacit acknowledgment of her claim, by 
the multitudes that flock to her shrines of learning, or light their 
lamps at her altars. Toward genius France is thoroughly dem- 
ocratic. No where is intellectual worth more ardently welcomed 
and more richly rewarded. Its source is not questioned ; merit 
is the sole criterion. The consequence is, that, in every depart- 
ment of knowledge, she has an accumulation of experienced and 
cultivated intellect, ready to serve her in those points which 
render a nation illustrious in the eyes of mankind. 

Kingdom, empire, or republic, France has cherished learning. 
In her legacies from Louis XIV., she has not much cause of con- 
gratulation, but the encouragement he bestowed upon men of 
letters, placed talent in its true position. Francis I. paid a 
homage to learned industry, worthy of its appropriate position in 
the scale of humanity, when, in visiting the printing-office of 
Robert Estienne, he refused to disturb him, but waited quietly, 
leaning upon an arm of the press, until Estienne had finished 
correcting the proof upon which he was employed. This was at 
an epoch, when his rival, Charles V., picked up for Titian the 
pencil he had accidentally dropped. 

In France the assistance or encouragement of merit proceeds 
directly from the government. The Council General of the 
Seine, in one of its late sittings, voted twelve hundred francs to 
a young man named Desforges, to enable him to cultivate his 
extraordinary mathematical talent. He is a stone-mason, and 
although he does not know the common ci'phers of arithmetic, 
he is able to perform intricate mental calculations. He first 
attracted attention by some observations he made on the power 
of a steam-engine employed in the repairs of the Pont Neuf, 
which astonished the engineers, who called the attention of 
several members of the Institute to the phenomenon. They were 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 113 

equally astonished, and brought him at once to the notice of the 
city government. 

The President has lately sent ten thousand francs to the pro-' 
fessor engaged in experimenting by means of the pendulum upon 
the movement of the earth, as an encouragement to prosecute 
his researches. He has also ofiered a re^^ard of fifty thousand 
francs to the individual of any nation, who discovers the method 
to make electricity available with economy to the various prac- 
tical arts. The Institute of France, which is divided into five 
academies, offers annually the following encouragements for the 
various objects within its sphere of action. A prize of two thou- 
sand francs for poetry or eloquence ; a prize for the best treatise 
on public morals, and one for the most distinguished act of virtue 
performed by a poor native of France ; ten thousand francs for 
the best work on French history, and fifteen hundred francs 
every second year to some deserving but indigent man of letters. 
There are prizes varying from five hundred to three thousand 
francs for the best treatises on medals, antiquities, statistics, 
mechanics, experimental philosophy, discoveries in medicine or 
surgery, and all matters of public utility, and for the best works 
in the fine arts. The successful artists are sent at the expense 
of the State to prosecute their education at Athens and Rome. 

In the various scientific, literary, and superior schools of Paris, 
there are between four and five thousand students. In 1851 
there were thirteen hundred medical students, and two thousand 
seven hundred and sixty nine students of law. The numbers of 
the two latter vary materially from year to year. In 1844 there 
were two thousand four hundred students of medicine, and three 
thousand one hundred and forty-three of law. The professors of 
these schools are paid by government. 

Education is regulated by a " Supreme Council of Public In- 
struction," composed of four dignitaries of the Catholic church, 
two of the Protestant, one of the Jewish, three Counselors of 



114 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

State, three members of the Com't of Cassation, and three of the 
Institute. These are all elected from their several colleagues. 
Eight members are appointed by the President of the Kepublic, 
from counselors, inspectors-general, or professors of faculties ; 
and three from the heads of private establishments of instruc- 
tion. This Council is presided over by the Minister of Public 
Instruction. *" 

It would be tedious to the reader to go through all the details 
of a system, which, emanating from one supreme head, extends 
its care to every department of public instruction. I will con- 
fine myself to brief notices of a few only of the institutions and 
collections which are placed by the government at the service 
alike of all nations, for the advancement of art and knowledge, 
not exclusively professional or scientific, merely observing that 
the requirements at the examination of all regular students, are 
of the most comprehensive and rigid character. 

The National College of France has twenty-eight professors, 
who give gratuitous lectures on the following topics : astrono- 
my, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, chemistry, natural his- 
tory, political economy, archseology, the Oriental tongues, natural, 
comparative, and national law — history, classic literature, and 
philosophy, French, the languages, and history of Europe gener- 
ally. 

The " Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers" is a National Muse- 
um of machines, models, drawings, &c., connected with all 
branches of industrial art, somewhat upon the plan of the Patent 

* The President of the Republic, on the 9th of March, issued a decree, 
doing away the elective principle in the Supreme Council, making all offi- 
cers and professors connected with public instruction, dependent upon 
himself for their situations, and removable at his pleasure. This is a step 
beyond the Emperor, who, if he appointed them, allowed them to remain 
during life. The decree calls this a provisional arrangement, until the 
new law relating to public instruction can be perfected. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 115 

Oilice at Washington. It is an extensive institution, and sup- 
ports fourteen professorships for the gratuitous education of work- 
men in mechanics, manufactures, and agriculture, by annual 
courses of lectures. 

The " Ecole des Mines" gives gratuitous lectures on geology 
and mineralogy ; the school of modern Oriental languages has 
nine professors, who gratuitously lecture on all matters connected 
with Asiatic philology. The School of Fine Arts disseminates 
knowledge on all topics within its sphere, by twenty professors, 
besides yearly prizes, and an exceedingly interesting m.useum 
of architecture, containing, among other objects, models in cork 
or plaster, in the proportion of one to one hundred, of the Par- 
thenon, Coliseum, Propyleine, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Hanging 
Gardens of Semiramis, Baths of Augustus, the Amphitheatres 
of Aries and Nimes, and the wonders of Egyptian art. The 
western side of the Amphitheatre for the distribution of prizes, 
is beautifully painted in oil by Delaroche, representing the most 
celebrated artists of all nations, ancient and modern, assembled 
for the bestowal of prizes, and presided over by Zeuxis, Phidias 
and Apelles. It contains seventy-five figures of the size of life, 
one of which, a lovely blonde on the left of the judges, is a por- 
trait of Madame Delaroche. 

Besides the institutions mentioned, there are free schools for 
the instruction of artisans in drawing and building ; of young 
women, in design — I mean the mechanical branch only — and for 
music, declamation, and the education of civil engineers, directors 
of manufactories, and application of the sciences generally 

In July, 1850, the government created a Central Agronomical 
Institute, or School of Agriculture, with nine chairs. Pupils of 
all nations are received gratuitously ; and those of French origin, 
if their circumstances require it, obtain pensions. The most 
successful scholars are sent to travel abroad at the expense of 
the State for three years. 



116 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

The National Museum of Natural History, better known as the 
** Jardin des Plantes," has a world-wide celebrity. Attached to 
it are fifteen professors, who lecture gratuitously on every portion 
and object of the wide domain of Nature, illustrating their sub' 
jects by living specimens or collections in all departments of the 
science, unrivaled in extent and methodization. 

In the botanical department alone of this garden, there are 
cultivated upward of twelve thousand species of plants ; in the 
Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy there are fifteen thousand pre- 
pared specimens, from the skeleton of the whale, to that of the 
assassin of General Kleber, and every variety of the human species, 
from giant to dwarf, down to the minutest vertebrated frame. 
This collection was prepared by Cuvier, and is the most com- 
plete in existence. 

The number of mineralogical and geological specimens exceeds 
sixty thousand ; and of dried plants, woods, fruits, and grains, 
three hundred and sixty thousand. In the library there are 
ninety portfolios of original designs, embracing more than six 
thousand drawings, magnificently colored, and valued at four 
hundred thousand dollars. The gallery of zoology contains more 
than two hundred thousand specimens, arranged in progressive 
order, from the apparently inanimate zoophite, through every link 
in the animal kingdom, until it reaches its climax in man. 

The menagerie forms a varied and extensive colony of animals, 
birds, and reptiles, from the four quarters of the globe, arranged 
with the nicest regard to their habits and comfort, and so dis- 
posed as to make them feel as completely at home as any creat- 
ures can be in confinement. Indeed, with the exception of the 
more ferocious animals, which have a dejected and pining look, 
they appear to be very happy. They would be ungrateful if 
they were not ; for they are better housed and fed than one hun- 
dred thousand human beings living within sound of the roar of 
the forest king. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 117 

The military man and the partisan of peace visit the Museum 
of Artillery with very contradictory emotions ; the former looks 
with interest and pleasure, upon more than four thousand speci- 
mens of armor and weapons used in war, from the earliest ages, 
down to the Vincennes carabine and Colt's revolver ; while the 
latter shudders at the thought of the bloody work they have 
done, and the unnecessary additions they have made to human 
suffering, during their career of alternate victory and defeat. 
They have not all been in actual use. The greater part are 
only samples of the various instruments man has invented to 
slay his fellow-man. They are sufficiently numerous and inge- 
nious to leave the impression, that all are here except one — the 
club used by the first murderer. 

The firearms intended as a present by Napoleon for the Em- 
peror of Morocco, are most richly set with diamonds and precious 
stones, of very considerable value ; but looking as sadly out of 
place as would Valenciennes lace around a mailed hand. Im- 
prisoned in their glass cases, reflecting their brightness on cold 
steel or rusty iron, they give rise to many a fervent wish for their 
release from their unnatural imprisonment, from the fair, to 
whom alone, by right of kindred beauty, they belong. 

The suits of armor are exceedingly interesting in point of his- 
tory or tradition. Thus we have a helmet that claims Attila for 
its original owner ; another belonged to Abderama, whom Charles 
Martel prevented from giving a succession of Moorish sovereigns 
to France in 730, by slaying him, together with a hundred and 
fifty thousand of his countrymen. The gallant Francis I. is to 
"be seen on horseback as he rode on the fatal field of Pavia. 
The miserable assassin of his subjects, Charles IX., with his 
scarcely more worthy successor, appear as they appeared in life, 
— in armor. The helmet, sword, and breast-plate of Henry IV. 
are as battered and bruised as were at one time his fortunes ; and 
the Duke of Mayenne looks more peaceable than he ever did 



118 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

alive. The greatest wonder of all, is how the knights who sur- 
vived a field of battle, were able to survive the weight of their 
armor, which cased horse and rider in a solid wall of steel from 
head to foot, with holes for eyesight through which a mole could 
scarce see and much less breathe. Gunpowder was a blessing to 
the fighting trade in releasing them from the stillest and most 
unwearoutable costume ever invented. I have always consid- 
ered that the inventor of hats deserved impalement ; but he was 
a humane wretch, compared with the diabolical fabricator of 
a suit of mail, which, if it were any protection against being 
stuck through, created a much more imminent danger of suffoca- 
tion Indeed, history msniuates that in every rout there were 
more of these doughty champions smothered than slain in fight. 
Once down, they were unable to rise without help, and the un- 
encumbered foot soldiers had nothing to do but to cut their 
throats as they lay ; a deed which the fields of Crecy and Agin- 
court attest they were nothing loath to perform. 

If the contemplation of the iron garments of our warlike an- 
cestors, left me no cause of regret in modern broadcloth, I found 
no more cause to sigh after the " good old times," upon an ex- 
amination into the domestic comforts of these said lords. In the 
Hotel de Cluny, we have a fine specimen of one of the mansions 
of the fifteenth century, restored by the government in furniture 
and architecture to the standard of that period, and made a mu- 
seum of interesting objects of the Middle Ages. Here the visitor 
has an opportunity of drawing a practical comparison between 
the kitchen and boudoir of a lady of the chivalrous court of 
Francis, and the " cuisine" and " cabinet de toilette'' of the mod- 
ern dame. The fire-places of the former have undergone a 
wonderful contraction. Then there was no difficulty in roasting 
an ox entire ; now they will scarcely accommodate a turkey. 
My attention was attracted among the arms to what appeared to 
be and really was an eight-chambered revolving pistol, con- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 119 

structed precisely upon the principle of Colt's. The handle and 
date showed that it had anticipated his two centuries. There 
was another near it, of much more clumsy make, but intended 
for the same amiable service. 

Here is to be seen the famous but equivocal safe-guard, or 
rather, lock-up of chastity, made for, if not worn by, Diana of 
Poitiers, by order of Henry II. It is a curious relic of the curious 
liabits of a curious age. As even the most modest visitors look 
at it, at least sideways, I ttust there will be no indecorum in my 
mentioning it. Human nature is unfortunately so innoculated 
with curiosity, that there would be disappointment to hear of 
this " exposition of manners" after having left the Museum with- 
out obtaining a view of it. 

If the glum guardians of this old mansion would permit it. one 
could lie down in the very bed on which Francis I. as Duke of 
Valois, had slept. It is profusely carved, and looks stiff and un- 
inviting. Elaborate carving was the fashion of that day in all 
furniture. The interior of articles had not raiuch to boast of in 
way of finish, the expense and skill being lavished on the ex- 
terior. There are several splendid specimens of carved ebony 
buffets or wardrobes, that no work of like character now excels. 
We have also Flemish tapestiy, beautifully wrought, with the 
history of David and Bathsheba ; these personages and the whole 
court of the royal harpist being in grand toilette of the time of 
Louis XII. This is carrying the prophet's knowledge of coming 
events into a province of which there is nothing in Scripture to 
warrant that he was better informed than any of his contempo- 
raries. However, this is less ridiculous than the vanity of a 
certain French noble, who in a painting had his ancestors repre- 
sented as among those who came to make offerings to the infant 
Jesus. The Virgin Mary, suddenly recollecting their exalted 
rank, says to them " Pray be covered." 

On other tapestry, Henry IV. figures as Apollo, and his pious 



120 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES 

mother, one of the few good as well as great names that her sex 
has given to France, is metamorphosed into a nude Venus. 
There is a great variety of the nameless and curious nicknacks 
that constitute woman's delight in all ages, and without which 
her *' etageres" would have no more value than firewood. The 
Hotel de Cluny is a sort of semi-modern Pompeii — a connecting 
link between the expiring luxury of Rome and the dawn of the 
still more refined magnificence of France. 

Under its foundations, and projecti-ng beyond them toward the 
Rue de la Harpe, we come upon the oldest monument of Paris — 
the remains of the palace of her Csesar kings. In it, Julian was 
proclaimed emperor in 360. There is nothing remarkable in 
what time has spared except its gloomy hall, which was former- 
ly the frigidarium, or chamber of cold baths, and the still more 
gloomy subterranean vaults beneath, w^hich formed the apart- 
ments for warm baths. This relic is preserved with the utmost 
care and veneration. "Why is it that nations are so exceedingly 
anxious to be reminded of their age, while individuals wish to 
keep it a^ far from their thoughts as possible ? 

Paris is no less prolific in libraries than museums. In nine- 
teen, open to the public, it numbers two millions three hundred 
and eighty-two thousand books, and one hundred and thirty-four 
thousand three hundred manuscripts. The library of Ste. Gene- 
vieve, recently erected near the Pantheon, has its external walls 
covered with the names of celebrated writers of all centuries, 
from the earliest ages down. Among them I noticed that of 
"Washington ; honored, probably, more as great and good, than 
for literary fame. 

The leviathan of libraries is the " Bibliotheque Nationale," 
now deposited in the vast and prison-like hotel in the Rue Rich- 
elieu, formerly occupied by Cardinal Mazarin. The census of 
this library, like that of the world, is only taken by computation. 
They guess, therefore, the number of books and pamphlets to be 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 121 



one million four hundred thousand, and of manuscripts one hun- 
dred and twenty-five thousand. The catalogue alone of these 
last fills twenty-five volumes. The arrangement of the whole is 
bad for facility of reference ; the most valuable or curious works 
being lost in the common mass, so that, to find them, it is as 
much a matter of chance as to meet an acquaintance among the 
million souls that crowd the streets of Paris. There is also 
danger from fire in their present locality. It has been under 
consideration for a long time to erect an appropriate edifice else- 
where, from the proceeds of the sale of the land now occupied, 
which is valued at 2,400,000 francs. 

I never wander through its cold and gloomy halls, cased from 
floor to ceiling with long files of books, whose titles are almost 
obliterated in the wear of ages, and whose bindings once gay are 
now gray with time, without feeling that I am in an intellectual 
catacomb — a veritable place of skulls, that, having done their 
duty while living, arc now quietly laid on the shelf, without even 
the hope which attends mortal remains, to rise again. This 
then is the immortality of thought ! Millions of brains have 
delved for fame, wearied their aching sense over midnight oil, 
starved their bodies to feed their minds, laboring as no laborer 
can, distracted with doubt, burning with hope, ambitious of a 
name — and have found at last, in this cemetery of learning, a 
few inches of shelf-room so elevated from living eyes, that, unlike 
the epitaphs over their graves which stare at every passer, they 
can neither be read nor seen. The ideas to which they gave 
birth may exist, however, like coin in the outer world, passing 
from hand to hand, recognising no master, but blessing alike 
him who gives and him who receives. Ambition is a useful 
stimulus, but he who seeks other reward than the self-conscious- 
ness of rectitude, will find that he bites the apple of Sodom. 

This library is replete with interest to the bibliomaniac and 
antiquarian Here are preserved the parlifst spprimen of print- 

F 



122 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PRINCIPLES. 

ing, which, in less than half a century, attained a beauty and 
perfection that modern art scarcely rivals. The luxury and ex- 
tent to which various governments have carried the editions of 
works undertaken at their order, and limited to a few presenta- 
tion copies, are surprising. In this respect France is wisely 
munificent. Works of general utility or scientific and historic 
value, which would not remunerate private enterprise, are printed 
at the national printing-office at the expense of the government. 
This establishment is on so liberal a scale, that when Pope Pius 
VII. visited it, the Lord's Prayer was printed in one hundred and 
fifty languages, bound and presented to him before he returned 
to his carriage. 

In the engraving department there are more than one million 
three hundred thousand plates, including ninety thousand por- 
traits and three hundred thousand maps and charts ; furnishing 
a complete history of the art from its rude commencement to its 
present perfection. 

The cabinet of medals and coins numbers one hundred and fifty 
thousand, many of which are exceedingly rare, and some unique. 
The series of Roman and Greek medals is very complete, and ex- 
hibits beautifully finished portraits of the most eminent rulers of 
antiquity, including Alexander, the CsBsars, and earlier illustrious 
men of the Roman republic. Here is preserved also, perhaps, 
the oldest relic extant ; the remarkable oval black marble carved 
with rude figures, underneath which is the inexplicable cunei- 
form writing to which learning has as yet failed to find the key. 
It was brought from the site of the Tower of Babel. 

The collection of ancient and modern gems and cameos is very 
full and valuable. The autographs are neither so numerous nor 
interesting as those of the British Museum. Among them, how- 
ever, we find Fenelon's original manuscript of Telemachus ; 
writings of Galileo, letters of Racine, Moliere, Corneille, and 
Voltaire ; the last wrote a remarkably good hand, fine and dis- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 123 

tinct ; Henry IV., the fair Gabrielle, the repentant Valliere and 
devout Maintenon ; and lastly, what will most attract American 
curiosity, the famous note of Franklin to Madame Helvetius, in 
which the impassable philosopher of more than threescore and 
ten distanced French gallantry with its own weapons. It is too 
good to be turned into English ; I copy it verbatim. 

" M. Franklin n'oublie jamais aucune Partie ou M® Helvetius 
doit etre. II croit memo que s'il engage d'aller a Paradis ce 
matin, il ferait supplication d'etre permis de rester sur terre 
jusqu'a une heure et demie, pour recevoir I'Embrassade qu'elle 
a bienvolu lui promettre en la reunion chez M. Turgot." 

Franklin was no favorite with the old noblesse. Louis XVI. 
detested him, and, to express his dislike, sent one of his lady ad- 
mirers a certain nameless domestic utensil of the purest Sevres, 
in the bottom of which was his portrait and the well-known 
motto, " Eripuit Cselo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis." 

Madame de Crequey, whose hand was kissed by Louis XIV. 
and who lived to receive the same homage from the Emperor 
Napoleon, relates, that she was one day invited to meet the cel- 
ebrated American at dinner, the post of honor next to him being 
reserved for her. In her aristocratic eyes he was only a low and 
disgusting republican. She says she revenged herself by not 
speaking a word to him during the meal, but amused herself in 
observing his manners. He had a brown coat, brown vest, 
brown breeches, and "brown" hands. She was horrified in 
observing him break several eggs into a glass, mix them up 
with butter, pepper and salt, and eat the unsightly mess with a 
spoon. 

The sepulchre of Thoutmes III., after reposing in quiet at 
Karnac for some thirty-five hundred years, has been removed to 
the court-yard of the Bibliotheque Nationale, on the walls of 
which the world of to-day may read the hieroglyphical tale of 
the deeds of the ancestors of this Egyptian Pharaoh. Another 



124 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

room contains tlie famous zodiac of Dendarah, with which at one 
period French philosophy frightened the Christian world by its 
astronomical interpretations. If they had proved correct, they 
would have given the lie to the Mosaic chronology. Happily 
for believers, the stone of four thousand centuries was soon shown 
to have the very juvenile age of but twenty. 



PERSPECTIVE OK THE LOUVRE. 



There yet remains the greatest Csesar of them all, — the 
Louvre ; a gem of architectural beauty, worthy of the treasures 
it holds. It ranks with St. Peter's, the Vatican, the Palazzo 
Utfizi, the Museo Borbonico and the British Museum, as one of 
the established wonders of the world. The simple catalogue of 
its contents would form a respectable library. It needs, how- 
ever, some cleverly arranged guide-book that the visitor may not 
only know what is most worthy of his attention, but where to 
find what he seeks. There are so many halls and entrances, 
that much time is often lost in fruitless research. Indeed, a 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 125 

stranger not unfrequently leaves with the impression that he has 
seen all the collections of the Louvre, when he has, perhaps, not 
entered more than half the number of museums. The mere list 
is formidable. 

The Museum of Antiques is a series of apartments on the 
ground-floor, containing statues, bas-reliefs, vases, candelabra, 
&c. It is here we find the most beautiful discovery of modern 
times ; the mutilated but still incomparable statue known as the 
Yenus de Milo. On the same floor we find the Assyrian, Egyp- 
tian, American and Algerine Galleries ; the Museum of Casts, 
of the Middle Ages and Revival of Arts ; of Engraving on Brass 
and of Modern Sculpture, the last occupying five halls. 

Ascending by a magnificent marble staircase, we enter the 
Salle Ronde, remarkable for its fine mosaic pavement. On its 
right is the splendid gallery of Apollo. Passing through this, a 
carved ebony passage-way conducts the visitor into the Salon 
Carre, which is of itself elaborately beautiful, and contains the 
gems of the paintings of the Louvre, so disposed as to be advan- 
tageously viewed from luxurious velvet divans, in which I am 
sorry to say 1 have seen, at least, one visitor sound asleep. 

The gem of the Soult gallery, The Conception, by Murillo, by 
some claimed to be his master-piece — has been placed here since 
its purchase for 123,060 francs by the French government. Great 
as was the price paid for it, fifteen minutes after it was struck 
off, a telegraphic dispatch arrived from Spain to buy it at ami 
'price. A close examination discloses only a mass of confused 
coloring, more or less damaged. Let the visitor withdraw a few 
steps and the full beauty bursts upon him. The angelic children 
are literally floating in the air, while the Virgin is radiant with 
heavenly beauty. There appear to be places where some less 
skillful hand has retouched the canvas. The faces of the children 
are of a vulgar cast ; too physically healthful. The expression 
of the Virgin struck me as tinged with an expression of sorrow, 



126 PAUISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

a Magdalen sadness, instead of wearing that celestial joy which 
should belong to the mother of the Saviour in the announce- 
ment of the glad tidings to mankind. Soult's pictures brought 
1,500,000 francs. In 1829 he offered them for sale for 90,000 
francs, the purchaser to get possession of them at a time when 
there was some risk of confiscation. 

On the right is the Hall of Jewels, containing, in elegant 
presses, vases of precious stones, and silver and gold church uten- 
sils, some of which date back to Charlemagne. Here are also 
the jeweled looking-glass, and other articles of toilet, the gift 
of the republic of Venice to Marie de Medicis, and many other 
curious and valuable objects. That which interested me most, 
was a little statue of our Saviour, of about ten inches in height, 
of a greenish stone as compact as porphyry. It is of most exqui- 
site workmanship, with an expression of mingled humility and 
compassion on a face of divine beauty. 

The long gallery, in which are the paintings of the older 
Italian, Flemish, Spanish, and French schools, is nearly a quarter 
of a mile in length. On entering it for the first time I was dis- 
appointed. Repeated visits, however, taught me that taste ex- 
panded and improved in the contemplation of its master-pieces. 
The paintings which, on the first glance, gave me the same im- 
pression as does a confused crowd of strange faces, soon appeared 
in all the pleasing variety of individual acquaintances. Each 
had its peculiar talent and its definable attraction. Each struck 
a different mental chord, and the whole gave birth to that quiet 
harmony of the mind, which is to the intellect what an approv- 
ing conscience is to the soul. It is the realization of artistic 
beauty ; the joy of seeing actually defined what only existed as a 
flitting shadow in the brain. Almost all possess the power to 
appreciate beauty, but few the talent to give it form and ex- 
pression. This gallery possesses fourteen hundred and eight 
paintings. Napoleon made it the finest in existence, but in the 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 127 



capture of Paris, the allied powers compelled the restitution 
of the chefs-cVmivrcs of the world to their respective owners. 

The Hall of Bronzes is full of valuable rehcs of ancient art. 
Next is that of the Sept Cheminees, in which are found the 
master-pieces of the modem French school. This leads into the 
Galerie Fran9aise, also appropriated to the works of eminent 
French artists. This gallery is sub-divided into nine halls. 
Then we enter upon a series of apartments, in which are dis- 
played the arts of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. These 
collections are exceedingly choice and comprehensive, and pre- 
sent a vivid picture of the domestic life of those defunct nations. 
The Middle Ages and ecclesiastical historj' are equally well ex- 
hibited in halls devoted to their arts. There are others which I 
do not enumerate. Merely to name them would convey no more 
adequate idea of their intrinsic interest and value than would a 
brick, shown as a specimen of a house. In addition to the 
present attractions, Louis Napoleon has ordered the formation 
of a museum of articles belonging to the sovereigns of France, 
in which the souvenirs of his uncle will occupy a conspicuous 
place. 

In the " Salle des Seances," among a crowd of paintings of 
gigantic dimensions and comparatively little interest, there is to 
be seen one about two feet and a half long by two in height, in 
a dingy, time-worn frame, without ^ name or even a number, 
yet there is none in all the Louvre I have more admired for its 
perfect finish and lifelike tone. It is of the Dutch school, and is 
a skating scene, with a multitude of figures, dwindling in the 
perspective into almost imperceptible dimensions. No miniature 
of Petitot is more perfect in the minutest details. This is the 
more remarkable as it embraces a great variety of objects, and 
all equally well drawn and colored. All the other treasures of 
the Louvre I was contented to admire or study as they were, but 
this I coveted. An idea may be formed of the labor expended 



128 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

oil it from the price asked by the artists of the Louvre for a copy. 
Good copies of the most admired paintings can, in general, be 
had for from two to four hundred francs. For those of this, two 
thousand francs are demanded. 

1 have been able to give but an imperfect idea of the extent 
of the treasures of art and science which the government of 
France places at the disposal of the entire world. The palaces 
and museums of the Luxembourg, Versailles, Fontainebleau, St. 
Cloud, Meudon, and other places of interest, are equally at the 
disposal of strangers, without charge. The government un- 
doubtedly reaps a reward in the immense sum of money ex- 
pended by foreigners in Paris, drawn thither by this liberality, 
and to gratify their tastes in the enjoyment of these refined and 
elegant superfluities of life, in the production of which French 
genius excels that of any other nation. It was computed that 
200,000 strangers arrived at Paris to witness the distribution of 
the eagles to the army on the 10th of May, and that they left in 
the city 40,000,000 of francs. The number of troops under arms 
at the review has been greatly exaggerated, even by the official 
journals, some of which quoted them at 80,000 and none under 
60,000 men, which numbers will doubtless go down in history 
as the true statement. The actual number was 36,000, of 
which 6000 were cavalry, the finest troops of Europe. Some 
conception may be formed of the multitude of visitors to the 
museums of the Louvre and Versailles alone, from the fact that 
$20,000 are annually received for the deposit of canes, umbrellas, 
and parasols, which are not allowed to be taken into the gal- 
leries. As the charge on each is but two sous, this would give 
a million of visitors who carried these articles, and they form but 
a small proportion of the entire number. Nearly one hundred 
thousand dollars are received from the sale of catalogues. That 
Yankee thrift which judges of the utility of an investment solely 
by its monied dividends, may hence conclude that on the ground 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 129 

of a national speculation the government have not greatly erred 
in the establishment of these institutions. Their effect on the 
civilization of the people, and the cultivation of the noble and 
beautiful in art, it is difficult to over-estimate. It is equally- 
difficult to realize that any population, however brutal, would 
vent their political hate in the destruction of objects which add 
so much to the glory and prosperity of their country. Yet we 
find no learning, however venerable ; no art, however beautiful ; 
no association, however sacred, spared by the revolutionary 
hordes that seek to impose their tyranny alike on kingdom and 
republic. After the Revolution of 1848, the provisional govern- 
ment was obliged to conceal the beautiful statues of Joan of 
Arc and the Duke of Orleans to prevent their loss. The mob in 
their attack on the Tuileries and the Palais National, spared 
neither literature, paintings, nor furniture. In the latter edifice 
they destroyed the queen's private library, burned six hundred 
thousand engravings belonging to Louis Philippe, and broke so 
much glass and china, that more than sixty thousand pounds of 
fragm-ents were afterward collected and sold by order of the 
liquidators of the civil list. Such are the citizens that shout 
" Vive la E-epublique Sociale et Democratique I" 

The French government forbade the passage of Kossuth 
through their territories for fear of his influence over the Socialists, 
but I noticed they had of late allowed to be struck at their mint 
a medal with his bust on the face, and on the reverse, in Enghsh, 
" Set at liberty by the United States, 1851." This is the more 
strange, as they had arrested and fined all those who sold his 
effigy about the streets. The mint enjoys the monopoly of cast- 
ing medals, by the sale of which it derives a considerable income. 
In it, there is preserved a fine series of French medals from 
Charlemagne down to Louis Napoleon. Those of the Emperor 
are exceedingly beautiful, and form a complete history of his re- 
markable career. A model in bronze of the cast of his head, 



130 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

taken a few hours after his death, is here to be seen. I was 
disappointed in the apparent volume of the brain and breadth of 
the forehead. The gigantic bust of Napoleon in marble, done 
by Canova in 1806 for Fouche, which stood close by, was ev- 
idently much flattered. His features by all accounts were classi- 
cally beautiful, but it is quite apparent from his portraits and 
medals executed when he was simply General, and those after- 
ward done in honor of the Emperw, that the artists of the latter 
had made a sudden discovery of a wonderful increase of personal 
beauty. 



CHAPTER XV. 

SECRET POLICE AND SOME THINGS NOT SECRET. 

When a newly arrived American is informed that ail his 
movements are knoA\ai to the police, that there is nothing he can 
do, and scarcely any thing he can say or think, but what he will 
find duly chronicled in its records, he looks incredulous. Never- 
theless it is in the main true. The first care of the police is to 
ascertain the nation and occupation of the stranger, his business 
and general habits. If these are satisfactory, he is subject only 
to a general surveillance. Should he become an object of sus- 
picion, the Argus eyes of this mysterious power are upon him 
every where. They report when he goes out and when he re- 
turns ; where he visits and whom he visits ; who visits him ; 
what letters he receives ; where from ; and his habits of eveiy 
name and nature, even to the number of glasses of wine he may 
take in the course of a day, and his very conversation. So 
thorough is this watch, that when Caussidiere, the companion 
of Louis Blanc, became prefect of the police of Paris, having the 
curiosity to examine the reports made relative to himself before 
the Revolution of February, 1848, he exclaimed with astonish- 
ment. " Not only my actions but my intimate thoughts !" 

How is this effected ? In various ways. There are, firstly, the 
uniformed agents of the police, its external eyes, whose duties and 
appearance are so well known, that they are easily avoided. But 
in avoiding Charybdis, the suspected seldom see the more danger- 
ous Scylla, or the secret agents, whose eyes and ears are in every 
cafe, restaurant, oorrier, or place, where men do congregate, and 



32 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



under every disguise. They have as many shapes as Proteus, 
and as many colors as the chameleon. There is no locality, from 
the salon in the Faubourg St. Germain to the lowest haunt in 
the quarter St. Antoine, in which they can not make themselves 
completely at home. 

The employees relieve each other in their watches with the 
regularity of sentinels. The following note from an ex-prefect 
of police to his successor, on finding himself incessantly followed 
by two police agents, got wind immediately after the change of 
ministry in November last, greatly to the amusement of the peo- 
ple of Paris : 

** Monsieur le Prefet — I have the honor to announce to 
you that I leave to-morrow to have a few days' shooting in the 
country. It is, therefore, perfectly useless to send your agents 
charged to watch my house and to follow me. I will do my- 
self the honor of informing you of my return. 

" Accept, etc., Carlier." 

The finest broadcloth, or the richest satin, the profoundest 
courtesy, or the most fascinating manner, will not insure one 
from being in the presence of an informant. The very musician 
who plays his organ under the windows has his mission ; the 
commissionaire at the corner of the street, his ; and if any knowl- 
edge is desired of internal movements, there is the porter, gener- 
ally a woman, who as the Cerberus for every house, knows every 
person, package, or note that enters, and generally every thing 
that goes out, and who, for a " consideration," can open a chan- 
nel of communication, via the kitchen, as to what transpires in 
the parlor. This system of espionage is not confined to public 
exigencies. It ramifies through all classes of society according 
to individual wants. I can not better illustrate this, than by Sir 
Francis Head's entertaining narrative taken in short-hand from 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES, 133 



the mouth of one of the twelve thousand commissionaires of 
Paris, who best answer to the literal truth of" Jacks of all work," 
of any class of human beings. They are to be found all over the 
city, clad in blue velveteen trowsers and blue corduroy jackets, 
with brass plates affixed to their breasts, containing their num- 
bers, orders, and names. They are faithful and intelligent men, 
and can be relied on for any commission, from the conscientious 
delivery of the Koh-i-noor itself to the most sentimental note 
that love-stricken swain ever indited ; they black boots ; carry 
baggage ; wash floors ; beat carpets ; carry up fuel ; in fine, do 
all the chores of a domestic establishment, even to making the 
beds. They watch with the sick and dead, pawn and redeem 
articles at the Monts de Piete, curry horses, travel ; in short, it is 
impossible to find any thing they are not ready to do at a mo- 
ment's notice, even to giving you the news of the day or the 
gossip of the neighborhood. But I will let the " commissionaire" 
speak for himself, on one branch of his accomplishments. 

"Sometimes, when a beautiful woman passes by, a gentleman 
says to me, ' Commissioner, follow that lady, and try to find out 
her name ; you must bring me back her name and address ; here 
is my card and direction where I live ; get the name very exact, 
and bring me back the answer to my house at six o'clock this 
evening ; I will pay you liberally for your commission.' I 

answer him, ' Sir, Madame lives in Street (never mind 

where I) etc. She is called Mademoiselle . Now, Sir, you 

can write to her, if that is agreeable to you.' This gentleman 
then says to me, ' Come to-morrow morning at nine o'clock ; I 
will give you a letter to deliver to Mademoiselle.' Now I go 
and carry the letter ; Monsieur sees me return. ' Here is the 
answer to your letter I' ' Ah I I thank you, Commissioner I 
Weill how much do I owe you. Commissioner?' 'Sir, this 
young lady kept me waiting a long time for her answer ; so, Sir, 
it is well worth thirty sous ; you know it is a long walk.' 



134 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

' Well, here are thirty sous, Commissioner ; if I want you to- 
morrow, 1 shall pass by your station.' Now, this gentleman 
puts to me some questions. He asks me, ' Has this young lady 
got handsome furniture?' I answer him, 'Yes, Sir, I saw a 
good bed, a convenient writing-table, a beautiful clock on the 
chimney-piece, and the floor was carpeted. In short, Sir, I have 
told you all I saw. Sir, I am going back to my station.' 
' "Well I that will do. Commissioner I If I want you I will let 
you know.' ' I thank you. Good-day, Sir.' Now, when a 
door-keeper refuses to tell me the name of the person I describe 
to him — for example, a tall, fair lady who has just come in, 
who has crossed over to the back of the court-yard, to the stair- 
case on the right hand — I say to the door-keeper, ' Monsieur 
door-keeper 1 would you be so good as to tell me the name of 
that tall lady who has just gone in there all alone ?' The door- 
keeper says to me, ' But what do you want with her name ?' 
I say to him, ' It is a gentleman who has given me the commis- 
sion to learn the name of that young lady (correcting himself) — 
of that person, because I have not known sometimes whether 
she was a married or an unmarried lady.' The door-keeper says 
to me, ' If such is the case, to oblige you, I will tell you. She 
is Mademoiselle, such a one :' — on my part, I show a little civil- 
ity to the door-keeper, by giving him a glass of wine. 

" Now, there is another subject which I will explain to you. 
"When a gentleman has no confidence in his wife, he employs a 
Commissioner to follow her when she goes out alone. Then the 
gentleman says to the Commissioner, ' Follow that lady ; you 
must tell me of every place where she stops ; I shall come to 
your station this evening for an answer.' Then I say to the 

gentleman, ' Sir, Madame stopped in Street, Number — . 

Madame remained for half an hour in that house ; during th'e 
time I Avalked up and down opposite to the carriage-gate on 
the other side of the street, in order to know when she should 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 135 

leave the street, Madame Avent to the warehouse fur novelties 

Street, Number — . From thence Madame got into a 

hackney coach, which she stopped in the street on coming out of 
the warehouse. As for me, I ran as fast as my legs could carry 

me to follow the carriage. Madame got out of it in Street, 

say Number — . Madame sent away the carriage, after having 
paid for it. Madame went into that house, where she staid an 
hour and a half. On comnig out of that house, Madame went 
straight home. Madame returned home at half past live. I 
did not see any description of gentlemen speak to Madame. In 
short. Sir, these are all the details and information which I can 
give you, to-day.' The gentleman says to me, ' Well done. 
Commissioner ; how much do I owe you ?' I say, ' You are 
generous enough to comprehend how much the commission is 
worth.' ' Here, Commissioner, are two francs. Are you satis- 
fied ?' ' Yes, Sir, I am satisfied.' ' If I want you to-morrow, I 
will let you know, or I will go to your station myself I say to 
him, ' Yery well, Sir, it is all right. I thank you. Good-day, 
Sir.' AYell, the next morning the gentleman arrives. ' Tell 
me, Commissioner, can you do me the same commission that 
you did yesterday ? You understand ; — come Avith me ; you 
will keep yourself opposite my carriage-gate ; when a lady 
comes out — a little brunette — she is to come in half an hour ; 
she has a gown of tartan silk, a green bonnet, and a large shawl, 
with a blue ground and red flowers — you will follow her. 
Keep yourself at a distance, some way ofT, so that she may not 
suspect that you follow her ; bring me back a very exact ac- 
count ; you must tell me wherever she has stopped, the name of 
the street, and the number of the house, and of all the houses, 
where she may stop. I shall come and get your answer this 
evening, at seven o'clock.' 

"It is now seven o'clock. ' Sir, I have done your commission 
very exactly. On leaving her house, Madame stopped on the 



136 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

Boulevard, at a shoemaker's shop. Madame staid there fifteen 

mim^tes ; from there, Madame went to Street, Number — ; 

Madame staid two hours in that house ; from thence Madame 
came out ; she went to the Garden of the Tuileries ; Madame 
was talking for about an hour with a gentleman, well dressed, 
not very tall, of a dark complexion ; a gentleman who may be 
about eight-and-thirty; this gentleman wears mustaches. From 
thence Madame parted from this gentleman ; she returned home 
to her own house at half past six. This is all the tour that 
Madame has made to-day.' 

" Sometimes a lady in the same way makes me follow her 
husband, whom I know. In order that this gentleman may not 
recognize me, I dress myself decently, like a citizen. My com- 
rade, opposite, once followed a gentleman for ten days, at the 
rate of six francs a day ; in the course of all those ten days he 
was not able to discover or find out any thing I" 

Every government of France, whether monarchy, empire, or 
republic, has preserved the system of secret pohce. It must 
therefore arise from the exigencies of French character, or be 
deep-rooted in the necessities of the public authorities. When 
its application is solely confined to individuals obnoxious to the 
civil laws, the result can not but be beneficial. But diverted 
into a political weapon, it becomes the most insidious as well as 
dangerous antagonist to liberty. No individual can be safe from 
the malice of an enemy directed through a spy. Society grows 
corrupt because dissimulation becomes a necessity. There is no 
option left the indiyidual other than a passive acquiescence in 
the will of his rulers, or imprisonment or banishment without 
appeal to jury. 

It is its comparative value as a regulator of society, and as 
a political machine, that I wish to notice. Of the latter, there 
can be but one opinion in the United States. In regard to the 
former, there is much to be said on both sides. The two repub- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 137 



lies present the extremes of policy in this respect. In the United 
States the authorities direct their efforts more to punish than to 
prevent. So jealous are they of civil liberty, that they leave 
much latitude to rogues and charlatans, rather than intrust any 
power with the arbitrary control of individual acts, even though 
the general welfare may seem to warrant its exercise. Hence 
formal acts of the legislature become necessary to combat every 
evil. And so subtle is law and so cumbrous its forms, that it is 
only where a nuisance has become intolerable that society bestirs 
itself for a remedy. We leave our moral sores to come to a 
head, and discharge themselves. The result is, that many lives 
are lost and much injury done by carelessness, quackery, imper- 
fect construction of edifices, bursting of boilers, burning of boats, 
or collision of cars, before the public become fully sensible that 
the right of public safety is paramount to the right of private 
gain. At every great catastrophe, there is a periodical excite- 
ment and call for reform. But personal enterprise hurries so 
rapidly on, that the warning is lost in some new invention or 
some fancied improvement of private interest, and the public 
quietly submit to the same risks as before. 

This system is not without its advantages. It leaves every 
thing to individual competition. It develops enterprise and im- 
provement, because success depends upon presenting something 
to the public better and cheaper than existed before. In the 
great strife of private interests the public must gain. It leaves 
the great tidal wave of commerce quietly to seek its own level. 
Talent, genius, enterprise, and industry, have each a fair start, 
with the entire public sitting in judgment. The consequence is, 
that though many quacks may find their way into every profes- 
sion, yet real worth is sure to rise to the head of its legitimate 
sphere. 

It is also an essential element of our individual independence 
and self-reliance. With less to lean upon, we become more ca- 



138 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

pable of supporting ourselves. Although we may run more risks 
in our frame of social life, we are better prepared to meet and 
overcome them, than if we had been carefully protected from 
every chance of mishap. The social element, like water, purifies 
itself; the sediment gradually sinking to the bottom, leaves the 
top clear and healthy. 

We leave to every one the exercise of his own judgment in the 
supply of his wants ; at the same time establishing the govern- 
ment upon the aggregation of individuals. In France this is re- 
versed. The individual rests upon the government, which forms 
the great base of society. Withdraw this foundation, and the 
nation is immediately precipitated into anarchy. In the United 
States, were a plague to destroy at one moment every public offi- 
cer, the people would soon quietly fill their places by new elec- 
tions. Order rises from the one, from the other it descends. 
Hence with the former, it is an exhaustless fertilizing spring ; 
with the latter, an uncertain cloud, from which there may come 
the tempest as well as the genial shower. 

France has eight^^-six departments. At the head of each 
there is a prefect. Every department is divided into forty arron- 
dissements, under the charge of sub-prefects ; the arrondisse- 
ments are subdivided into cantons, and these last into com- 
munes, each of which is regulated by a " maire," whose simple 
order carries with it an authority in matters of the internal wel- 
fare of his jurisdiction, equal to that of an act of our legislatures. 
Paris alone has a Prefect of Police, with a corps of three hun- 
dred clerks. His bureau is subdivided into different departments 
of active service, each having its particular functions, but afford- 
ing mutual assistance as occasion may be. Thus there is the 
chief of the conservers of public safety, who commands a brigade 
of adroit criminal hunters. The chief, who watches over all 
persons of doubtful political views, clandestine gaming-houses, 
etc. There is another who regulates the houses of ill-fame ; an- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 139 

other, the public vehicles ; another, the boats that navigate the 
Seine, possessing authority to prescribe what they shall bring, 
and how they shall unlade their cargoes. The " Chef des Hal- 
les et Marches" regulates the price and sale of provisions. The 
" Chef de Service de la Salubrite" has the important charge of 
all that relates to the public health, such as the drains, closets, 
gas establishments, &c. These " chefs "are immediately respons- 
ible to the Chief of the Municipal Police. 

Paris has four Commissioners of Police to each of its twelve 
arrondissements, each having in charge one of the forty-eight 
" quartiers." Without giving farther details of the organization 
of this half-political and half-sanitary hydra, it is sufficient to 
add that its arms, ears, and eyes, embrace all France, concentrat- 
ing its knowledge and direction in one trunk, the newly created 
Minister of Police, the sum of whose duties is to allow nothing to 
exist in France unsanctioned by the government. 

Thus, the first notice an individual may receive, that his 
presence can be dispensed with in "La belle France," is a brief 
notification, that by calling at the proper bureau, he will receive 
his passport. Last autumn a simple decree of the Prefect com- 
pelled all foreigners residing in the dej)artment of the Seine, to 
apply for permission to remain, under penalty of immediate 
expulsion. The object was to examine into the history of each 
individual, and if, in the opinion of the police, the public safety 
required his banishment, he was immediately sent out of the 
country. Several hundred were in consequence banished. How- 
ever salutary such a purgative might be in a city like New York, 
our institutions require that a citizen must be considered inno- 
cent until adjudged guilty by a jury of his countrymen. Conse- 
quently, we are compelled to await crime before we act. The 
French seek to prevent it, by placing society as much as possible 
out of the risk. We punish ; they protect. It is not astonish- 
ing that each new government of France, in its turn, cherishes 



140 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

an institution, which, in return, can give it such efficient sup- 
port. 

The necessity of this despotism arises from a principle univers- 
ally acknowledged in France, "that no member of the commu- 
nity has the right to do that which is hurtful to the puhlic at 
large." It results, therefore, that he must be prevented from so 
doing. When we compare the general security of their public 
conveyances, the strength of their buildings, and all those points 
in which prevention is so much more valuable than remedy, with 
our own carelessness on these points, the comparison is greatly 
to the disadvantage of the United States. 

No steam-engine is allowed to be put into operation within 
the city, until it has been thoroughly tested, and then only under 
prudential regulations in regard to the building. Every manu- 
facture deleterious to health, must be completely isolated from 
human habitations. No one has even the right to kill a pig in 
Paris ; but the meat for the capital is slaughtered at authorized 
establishments, with the utmost regard to humanity compatible 
with the business, and an economy of material that leaves no 
waste. 

There are no expensive suits arising from the prosecution of 
nuisances. A simple order of the police is all that is required to 
remove any manufactory, however expensive, should the neigh- 
borhood find it " incommode," inconvenient. 

The most rigid supervision is exercised over the exterior of 
buildings, to see that the public be not endangered or incom- 
moded by faulty chimneys, insecure shutters, sign-boards, or in- 
cumbered sidewalks. This excess of care at times produces the 
very evil which it is the intention to obviate. Thus I have been 
annoyed for several days by an open drain because it was neces- 
sary to obtain permission from the police to close it. 

The care exercised over poisonous drugs, or whatever may 
jeopardize individual health, is more rigid still. Each profession 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 141 



is not only protected in its rights, but it is required to be com- 
petent to exercise its calling ; and it is not allowed to combine 
with it any other. There are no French Brandreths or Swaims. 
Gluackery has but an indifferent chance in contest with the 
police. Each chemist or apothecary is required to pass a strict 
examination. He can not sell any poisonous substance without 
a license, and then only under the authorized prescription of a 
physician, who is required to register all the particulars of a 
dose. Poisons of all sorts must be kept locked up by the chemist, 
who is liable to be visited at any moment by an agent of the 
police, accompanied by one of the professors of the school of 
pharmacy, to ascertain the nature and quality of his drugs. 

No patent medicines are allowed to be vended or advertised 
until they have been examined and approved by the National 
Academy of Medicine. This is literally putting the faculty on 
their honor, or it would be in the United States, for the business 
of doctors would materially decrease if pills and lotions were 
made contraband. The police of Paris have been obliged to 
make an exception in favor of the quackery so yearned for by 
the bowels of John Bull, for fear, if he were not allowed to 
swallow his favorite nostrum, he would quit Paris in disgust. 

The provisions are subject to the same inspection as the medi- 
cines. Meats must be wholesome, and the metallic utensils of 
cook-shops kept bright and clean. Wine and liquors have their 
regular tasters before they pass into the hands of the retailers. 
But all this care does not prevent very dubious substances from 
finding their way into the stomachs of their customers, from both 
sources. My cook satisfied me on this point, by observing, wher- 
ever there was a disposition to cheat there was a way, and prov- 
ing it also. 

The price of meat and bread is regulated by this same all- 
meddling authority. The latter depends upon the price of grain 
in the corn-market, and is fixed by the prefect twice a month, 



142 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PEINCIPLES. 

averaging atout three cents a pound. The weight and quality 
of the bread is also carefully looked after. The result is, that 
French bread is uniformly good, and at a price satisfactory to 
buyer and seller, as it is regulated on the most equitable scale 
for each. I asked a Frenchman, if it would not be better to 
leave trade free to fix its own prices. He replied, the result 
would be, that one baker would undersell another, and thus draw 
to his shop the population from other parts of the city, who 
would lose much time in consequence, besides creating confusion ; 
whereas now, the price and quality being uniform, all were con- 
tent. The degi'ee to which this care of the people is extended, 
borders sometimes on the ludicrous. For instance, the three classes 
into which railroad voyagers are divided, are locked up in sepa- 
rate rooms until the moment the train is ready to depart. They 
are then let out, and passed along with the utmost dispatch into 
their respective places. The reason given for this is, that if they 
were left, as with us, to take care of themselves, they would 
stand talking on the platform, and the train would go off with- 
out them. 

The following judgment, copied from one of the daily papers, 
will astonish our race of Ichabod Cranes : 

" Two persons, named Bapeaume and Mondiere, were yester- 
day fined five hundred francs by default, by the Tribunal of 
Correctional Police, for having opened a school without author- 
ization ; and the school was ordered to be closed." 

How much at a loss would be one of our " free and indepen- 
dent" citizen house-agents, for words to express his indignation 
at such a violation of his personal rights, were a constable to 
inform him that, under penalty of being fined, he must hereafter 
have all his advertisements of unfurnished houses printed on 
ivhite, and those furnished on yelloiv paper. Such is the order 
of the day here, and very convenient it is too. 

Among no class of public servants does this arbitrary power 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PHINCIPLES. 143 



produce more satisfactory results than the hackney coachmen. 
There are two thousand six hundred and seventy licensed public 
carriages, including three hundred and thirty-three omnibuses, 
producing to the city, from their taxation, a net income of about 
$70,000 per annum. Their numbers, fares, and regulations, are 
so plainly exposed on each, that the stranger is subject to none 
of the annoyances arising from the habits of extortion, so common 
in the cities of the United States. They are inspected daily, 
and any attempt at imposition is severely punished. 

The statistical know^ledge of the police is exact and compre- 
hensive. It tells every article left by accident in the public 
vehicles ; thus, in 1849, there were restored to their owners one 
thousand six hundred and forty-two articles, besides eight thou- 
sand two hundred and twenty-four francs in money. It gives 
each month the receipts of the places of amusement, as follows : 
For December, 1851, the theatres received six hundred and 
forty-eight thousand four hundred and twenty francs ; the con- 
certs, sixty-five thousand seven hundred and ninety francs ; and 
minor exhibitions, eight thousand five hundred and ninety-three 
— a total of seven hundred and twenty-two thousand eight hun- 
dred and three francs, which was less by one hundred and fifty- 
six thousand six hundred and ninety-seven francs than the pre- 
ceding month, owing to the closing of the doors during the 
" Coup d'Etat." It reports each day the arrival of strangers; 
their nation, profession, lodging, and any other particular the 
curiosity of the chief may desire to be satisfied about. In De- 
cember, 1851, there arrived at Paris from the provinces, eleven 
thousand eight hundred and eighty travelers, and from foreign 
countries two thousand three hundred and seventy-nine — a total 
of fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty-nine. Of this latter 
there were nine hundred and ninety-eight English, one hundred 
and eighty-four Americans, and twenty-six Turks. 

A citizen of the United States abroad is greatly puzzled to 



144 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

nationalize himself. An American means an inhabitant of any 
portion of the continent ; and almost invariably when I have 
been spoken to as an American, the parties addressing me sup- 
posed I was from a tropical climate. Om' national vanity con- 
stantly suffers from the ignorance so general of all matters relat- 
ing to our republic. The inhabitants of Europe at large have 
about as indefinite ideas of the United States, as had the old 
Romans of the then wild and unexplored regions of northern 
Europe. 

Every workman is required to have a " livret," or species of 
passport, indorsed by the police, without which he is treated as a 
vagabond, and any one employing him is subject to a heavy fine. 
It must always bear the acquittal of his last employer. 

This supervision extends to every thing in any way affecting 
the welfare and interest of society. It is a species of conscience 
for the body corporate, warning, checking, and punishing, as the 
case requires. Whatever may be its ultimate effects upon the 
national character, the stranger is bound to look upon it with 
gratitude. It protects him in the street ; it watches over him 
by night ; it is prompt to redress a wrong ; it makes smooth the 
public places ; it gives him useful information ; in short, saves 
him from a goodly proportion of the thousand- and-one ills which 
are the usual heritage of travelers. 

Skillful as the police are in preventing and tracking crime, 
they are often baffled by a body of men equally skilled in their 
nefarious profession. Vice has likewise its systematized organi- 
zation. Paris appears to be a poor field for the ordinary pick- 
pocket. I have not heard of a loss from this source, and no one 
seems apprehensive of the public places which usually are har- 
vest-fields for this class of depredators. The world of robbers, 
notwithstanding the incessant surveillance of justice, is a numer- 
ous one, and embraces every category of crime. The average 
number of inmates of the nine prisons of Paris is about ten thou- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 145 

sand, of which three thousand are children between twelve and 
eighteen years of age. In the month of December, 1851, there 
were arrested three thousand one hundred and fifty-two indivi- 
duals, of which two thousand three hundred and fifty-two were 
men, six hundred and thirty children, and but one hundred and 
fifty women. Two thousand three hundred and fifty-four knew 
how to read and write ; fifty-six only were entirely without 
instruction. More than one half, or one thousand four hundred 
and eighty-three men, two hundred and thirteen boys, and three 
women, were imprisoned for political causes, which, however, 
must not be understood in the literal sense of the United States, 
as simply a difference of opinion. A political cause in France 
may mean an interdicted cry, a malediction upon those in au- 
thority, an attempt to assassinate a soldier, or a shot at the Pres- 
ident. It comprises every thing, trivial or grave, calculated to 
disturb the security of the existing government, or bring it into 
disrepute. 

There exist in Paris professors of robbery, who hold regular 
courses of lectures, in which they not only explain theoretically 
every species of theft, but give practical illustrations before their 
pupils upon manikins constructed for this purpose. Their schol- 
ars pursue their studies for the usual term of an academic course, 
acquiring skill, no doubt, at the expense of the public. 

Vagabondism and beggary were, until recently, extremely rife. 
But the late stringent measures of the police have mostly cleared 
the streets of these nuisances, giving an example which our At- 
lantic cities would do well to imitate. Individual cases are ex- 
amined, and the really necessitous are relieved through the legiti- 
mate sources of public charity. The " m. aires," by circulars 
addressed to the inhabitants of their respective arrondissements, 
request offerings for the poor to be placed in their hands. In 
this manner, becoming the systematic dispensators of benevo- 
lence, they have the means to relieve the deserving, and to pun- 

G 



146 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND PRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

ish imposture, which has as many colors and shapes as a ka- 
leidoscope. 

Beggary, like robbery, in the progress of civilization has be- 
come an organization. It also has its schools and professors. 
No people give more generously, and perhaps indiscriminately 
to distress, than the French. In consequence, benevolence has 
given birth to the bastard vagabondism, w^hich, true to its para- 
sitical nature, threatens to strangle the very source of its strength. 
Happily, the government has undertaken so to direct the gifts of 
Ciiarity, as that they shall fulfill their legitimate intent, without 
becoming a premium to vice. Paris is being freed of these social 
pests, but it is at the expense, in some degree, of the United 
States, where they will continue to resort, until salutary strin- 
gency convinces them that a land of liberty does not imply a 
land of vagabondry. 

There are some individuals of this class whom the police, thus 
far, seem to leave in quiet possession of their stands, to which 
they appear to claim a prescriptive right ; possibly that the sight 
of a certain amount of misery and deformity shall be always be- 
fore the eyes of the public, to keep active the sentiments of pity 
and benevolence, and also to afford that species of contrast in 
social positions, which goes so far toward inculcating individual 
contentment. None who promenade the Boulevard des Italiens 
can have failed to remark the woman with wooden legs, seated 
on the sidewalk, ever plying her inharmonious fiddle to attract 
the gifts of the charitable. I am told she is one of the worst of 
the " mauvaises sujettes" of Paris. On the bridges there are al- 
ways to be found the blind and maimed, generally with some 
instrument of music. It is gratifying to see with what apparent 
sympathy and pleasure little children drop into their hats their 
pennies as they pass. 

French benevolence overflows in good works. The natural 
kindness of heart is greatly stimulated by the exhortations of the 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 147 

clergy. One sees constantly touching and delightful instances of 
impulsive goodness. One that happened under my windows a 
few days since occurs to me. A carriage dashing along the 
street, upset an old woman's stock of apples, and scattered them 
over the pavement, besides frightening her prodigiously. At that 
moment a fashionable crowd M^as pouring out of the Tuilerics gar- 
dens. Ladies and gentlemen, and even the little children, imme- 
diately stopped, re-arranged her cart, picked up her fruit, carefully 
replacing every apple, condoled with her, gave her money, and 
sent her in a few minutes on her way rejoicing. The ouly objec- 
tionable feature was, that the apple- woman appeared disposed to 
exaggerate her misfortune, in order to speculate on the sympa- 
thies of the white-kidded gentry around her. 

Paris has its foreign vagrants as well as New York. All 
classes, with an intuitive knowledge of strangers, make them the 
special objects of their dolorous solicitations. I have been fol- 
lowed for squares by young men, well dressed, plump in flesh, 
and with every appearance not only of sound health but full 
stomachs, most pathetically imploring charity on the score of not 
having had any thing to eat for forty-eight hours, being out of 
work, having a numerous family, and that it was the first time 
they had ever begged. If a " sergent de ville" appeared, they 
disappeared with an alacrity that left no doubt of their agility. 
One of them told me so often that it was the first time he had 
begged, that he began evidently to think it a good joke himself, 
and finally left me unmolested, as one of the initiated. 

I was much amused with an incident that befell a friend, who 
on these occasions, to disembarass himself of their importunities, 
always buried himself under a feigned ignorance of their desires 
A stout vulgar-looking woman, with a bruised eye and other un- 
mistakable evidences of a recent debauch, addressed him in the 
terms most in vogue, with which, as with a philosopher's stone, 
they hope to turn into gold all the sympathy that they touch. 



148 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

BetAveen disgust at her appearance and abstraction of mind, he 
exclaimed in reply, " Je ne don't speak English pas." " Arrah, 
is it you yourself that is English then," replied the Amazon in 
the purest of Hibernian. It is needless to add that it required 
some silver to arrest her brogue, when she found she had a sup- 
posed countryman for an auditor. 

The police have also of late cleared the streets of the numer- 
ous peddlers, vv^ho obstructed the public ways by their awkward 
carts, which frequently were of dimensions that required as much 
space to manoeuvre in as a Boston truck. They have also made 
war upon the newspaper boys, who, however, have not been 
silenced without stoutly battling for their privileges. The places 
of these noisy, turbulent urchins, making night and day alike hid- 
eous with their cries, have been filled by a class of middle-aged 
men and women, the former of whom may be seen half asleep, 
and the latter quietly working or nodding, at the corners of most 
of the principal streets until late at night, either entirely in the 
open air with a chair to sit upon and a bench in front, filled with 
the daily journals, sheltered from rain by only an umbrella, or else 
in a sort of sentry-box, fashioned after those extraordinary habi- 
tations of the " toupet" holders in the churches. The regular 
newspaper carrier is a man of distinction, sports a uniform, and 
levies contributions at New Year's ; but that race which in New 
York has shown itself able to cope even with the city govern- 
ment, has here been blown out of existence by the mere breath 
of the prefect of police. 

I have nowhere more forcibly realized the truth of the para- 
dox, that the extremes of civilization and barbarism meet. The 
females at both these degrees of life, supersede the natural affec- 
tion for children by a depraved attachment for dogs or other an- 
imals. Infants in Paris are sent into the country to be reared 
among strangers, because they would interfere with the fashion- 
able follies of their parents. A Polynesian mother leads her child 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 149 

and carries her dog. I have known a rich carriage, in which 
were ladies in costly toilets, to be stopped on the boulevards 
that one of the ladies might alight to pick up, with her own del- 
icately gloved hands, and to place upon the seat beside them, a 
canine pet, which had gone into convulsions with all the disgust- 
ing accompaniments of a dog in a fit. No human sufferer could 
have received more careful and . affectionate treatment. Fre- 
quently, more money is lavished on a single worthless animal, to 
say nothing of the nice attention to its natural wants, than would 
support a family, while its habits are a never-failing topic for 
conversation. I love a dog, but it is in its proper place, and not 
exalted above immortal beings. 

If further analogy between these two extremes is required, it 
is to be found in the labors imposed by the lords of creation, of 
both races, upon the female sex. We all know what a savage 
exacts of a woman as a help-meet. "Whether the requirement 
in France is as rigid or not, the effect is the same, and the sex 
work with an assiduity and severity not at all behind their sav- 
age sisters. They say French me7i are lazy, and they must work 
or starve. The fact is a Frenchman's gallantry is of a practical 
character. His attentions are seldom lavished without an eye 
to his own pleasure or interest, especially in his intercourse with 
women. He is not a self-denying animal. If he have a good 
seat he keeps it. If his feet are on a dry side-walk, it is not so 
certain but that the weaker vessel must step into the mud to 
pass him. I am not sure but he is half right when the arrogant 
incivility of many young American women is considered. Too 
much deference has a tendency to make them thoughtlessly self- 
ish. I had scarcely landed in the United States before this 
feature of American society was practically brought home to me. 
I w^as sitting in the saloon of one of our Long Island Sound 
Steamers with a number of spare seats about me, when a young 
lady, who fancied my position came up to me abruptly, and point- 



150 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

ing to my seat, said to her mother, " Here, mother, is a nice 
place ;" and without a look of acknowledgment coolly seated her 
mother in it, as I rose and offered it, to save myself from more 
pointed rudeness. 

The same indecencies which characterize savage life, are ex- 
hibited not only every hour but every minute by the gentlemen 
of Paris, in the most public promenades, and with a disregard 
to modesty absolutely painful to the novice in these sights. 
Habit has undoubtedly reconciled the Parisians to a condition 
of the streets, and wanton exposure that fills every stranger, not 
only with disgust, but surprise, that a nation which attaches so 
high a value to the refinements of art, should tolerate so umiec- 
essary a nuisance. The police that are so effectual in other re- 
forms, could certainly reduce this within the limits of necessity 
and privacy. Even the beautiful and retired Madeleine is pro- 
tected solely by notices threatening the penalties of law on those 
who would defile even a sacred edifice. This nuisance is abso- 
lutely forced upon the sight of the public, and engenders a disre- 
gard to the proprieties of life, which no home restrictions can 
fully counterbalance. With many these sentiments may be con- 
sidered mere prudery. But for their j ustification I appeal to the 
standard of female character as exhibited in New England, and 
I may add in the United States at large, where the sentiment of 
modesty is carefully guarded as the bulwark of chastity. 

But it is not in this respect alone that Barbarism finds its 
counterpart in Paris. The beautiful Gardens of the Tuileries ex- 
hibit daily scenes that are usually confined to the privacy of a 
nursery. Let any one wander from out of the beaten track of 
travelers, and he will see sights not to be described, but more 
common, if possible, among the females than the males, which 
will convince him that all habits, bad as well as good, converge to- 
ward Paris as toward a centre. Paris is indeed the capital of the 
world ; not only of the world of civilization but of barbarism also. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PHINCIPLES. 151 

This tendency to extremes has become a national characteris- 
tic. Heroic in virtues, demoniacal in crimes, they, with equal 
facility, glide from the refinements and luxury of civilization into 
the coarseness and poverty of savage life. I have seen French- 
men in all conditions, and I have ever found them equally at 
home amid the saloons of Paris, the wigwams of America, or the 
more captivating huts of Polynesia. The nature of the Anglo- 
Saxon is unyielding. The savage must either climb to his ele- 
vation or perish. Whereas a Frenchman, whom, to hear speak, 
you would believe could not exist out of Paris, by his ductility 
accommodates himself speedily to all races and events. Like hot 
iron thrust into water he sputters greatly at first, but soon cools 
into what, at heart, he really is, the true citizen of the world. 

If every government which has ruled France for the last half 
century had not been compelled to devote its energies chiefly to 
its own preservation, the march of improvement would have 
been much more rapid. With all their disadvantages, they have 
made much progress in the work of reform. It is greatly to the 
credit of Napoleon, that he was inflexible in his exactions of out- 
ward decorum at his court, while his police were active in sup- 
pressing the more public exhibitions of vice. To judge correctly 
of what has been done, it is necessary to recur to the public 
morals bequeathed to his reign by the depravity of the preceding 
monarchs and the license of the Uevolution. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SOMETHING CURIOUS FOR MORALISTS. 

The print-shops of Paris swarm with pictures of the most 
meretricious character, while books and engravings, of the vilest 
description, are widely though clandestinely circulated. The 
mind of" youth is thus early poisoned through one of the least 
guarded avenues. In representing the human figure, whether 
in marble, painting, or engraving, the artist has it in his power 
to elevate the sentiments of the beholder by giving to his work 
the expression of what is most noble and pure in human nature. 
The galleries and museums abound with these elevating triumphs 
of art. But, unfortunately, interest finds a more profitable 
market in pandering to depravity. 

These pictures are of every class and design, but all more or 
less illustrative of sensuality. The semi-official organ has of late 
the following announcement, which if it be carried out to the 
utter exclusion from public view of every print of an exception- 
able character, will be one important step toward guarding youth 
from contamination: "The authorities are about to take the 
severest measures to prevent the sale of obscene engravings and 
books, which are of so much injury to the public morals." 

This species of corruption has been doing its work for more 
than a century almost unheeded. From 1790 to 1793, the 
demagogues distributed among the people the most filthy and in- 
famous caricatures against Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, 
indifferent to the effect upon the morals, so that they excited 
hatred toward the unhappy royal family. The public mind thus 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 153 

becoming familiarized with these productions, a morbid taste 
was created for whatever was most licentious in art. The shops 
in the Palais Royal and other fashionable quarters began to vie 
with each other in the production and exhibition of the vilest of 
compositions. Napoleon caused these abominations to disappear 
for a while, but in some form or other they have continued from 
that day to this to do their errand of pollution. 

The public sentiment that would support this traffic would not 
be over-fastidious at any other shape which licentiousness might 
assume. Consequently, we find that with the same effrontery 
that the forms of prostitution were exhibited in shop-windows, 
prostitution itself marched triumphant in the streets, After 
sunset, no respectable person could enter the Tuileries or other 
public gardens. Nothing could exceed the indecencies of posture 
and dress to be seen in the streets ; and at the windows of their 
houses prostitutes exhibited themselves entirely naked. The 
generation that witnessed these things has not entirely passed 
away. 

The same disposition to shameless exposure among this class 
is still apparent, but the watchful eye of the police is ever upon 
them. From the public gardens and the Palais Royal they are 
entirely excluded. I refer only to those who are registered on 
the books of the police. Their deportment in the streets is no 
worse than that of the same class in our Atlantic cities. But I 
shall show in another place that they are the least dangerous to 
public morals of the class of females, who are at once the victims 
of the corruptions and the corrupters of Paris. At the risk of in- 
curring the charge of unnecessarily exposing the vices of society, 
I shall give some statements from authentic data, believing that, 
to contend understandingly with an enemy, we should know his 
resources. 

Prostitution in the United States is left alone so long as it 
does not intrude itself upon the public by the violation of some 



154 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

ordinance. History demonstrates, that wherever there are large 
collections of men there will be courtesans. The most cruel 
persecutions, and the severest legislation have been equally futile 
to eradicate this evil. French legislation assumes the ground 
that they are an inevitable adjunct to society in masses, and 
undertakes to regulate what it can not suppress. Much can be 
said on the relative effects of the two systems upon public 
morals. One thing is certain, that the French have succeeded, 
to a great extent, in diminishing the frightful physical suffering 
which has resulted to humanity from this vice within the last 
five centuries, and that they have hopes, if not of eradicating it 
altogether, of making the scourge comparatively innoxious. 

They do more than this. Every public woman is required to 
be registered, that she may be under the immediate surveillance 
of the police. No improper houses are allowed to exist near a 
school, public institution, or church. A female who has become 
"une fille inscrite" (and no one is allowed openly to pursue this 
"metier" without becoming so), is subjected to most despotic and 
stringent regulations for the preservation of public health. These 
are of a nature sufficient to eradicate any lingering traces of 
modesty, and every subterfuge is practiced to evade their dreaded 
requirements. 

When a girl applies for her license, she is seriously admonished 
upon the folly of her intentions. Efforts are made to terrify or 
disgust her with her proposed life. If she be very young, and 
from the country, her family are written to, that they may be 
induced to provide for her. In many instances the police act- 
ually take them to their paternal homes, only to be, as it gen- 
erally happens, ejected anew. "When there is no other resource, 
they shut them up in the Hospital St. Lazare, give them work, 
and make every effort possible to reclaim them. If they finally 
persist in their design, there is no alternative but to place their 
names upon the fatal register. It is at their option at any mo- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 155 

ment to have them erased, by givmg evidence of their intention 
to lead orderly lives. But while they remain registered, they 
must carry about them tickets, on which are inscribed their 
domiciles, and the results of the periodical professional visits to 
which they are subjected. 

In my first inquiries, I found that the most exaggerated ideas 
obtained in regard to the number of known prostitutes in Paris. 
In two instances they were computed at fifty thousand. This 
arises from taking the numbers to be seen in their favorite haunts 
as a standard for all Paris. They are concentrated in compara- 
tively few quarters. I am indebted to A. J. B. Parent Ducha- 
telet's valuable work for the following statistics, not without 
interest, as they relate to that unfortunate class from whom 
sprung the repentant Magdalen loved by Christ. 

In 1820 there were registered at the bureau of police for that year 2746 

1821 2913 

1822 2902 

1827 2471 

1830 3028 

1831 3260 

1832 3588 

This table shows a gradual but not very rapid increase. At the 
same ratio it would give for 1852, about six thousand, or just 
five times the number that existed in Boston eight years since. 

From 16th March, 1816, to 31st April, 1831, the total number 
registered was twelve thousand six hundred and seven, of which 
Paris furnished four thousand seven hundred and forty-four, and 
the provinces the remainder, except four hundred and eighty-two, 
who were of foreign origin. 

In 1831, there was one prostitute to every two hundred and 
fifty-five inhabitants ; the proportions to the various quarters 
varied materially. 

Rue St. Honore had one to every fifty-two inhabitants, while 



158 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FEENCH PRINCIPLES. 



the quartier du Mont de Piete had but one to every seven thou- 
sand four hundred and forty-two. The He St. Louis, with a 
population of seventy-five thousand, not one. 

The causes of prostitution were found, out of five thousand one 
hundred and eighty-three cases, to be these : 

Absolute destitution 1441 

Of these cases, one girl who had applied had been three days without food. 
In the month of November last, a girl of eighteen years of age committed suicide 
to avoid this life into which her own mother was forcing her. 

Loss of parents and expulsion from homes 1255 

To sustain old and infirm parents 37 

Older sisters to support their younger 29 

Widows to support their children 23 

Ran away from the provinces 280 

Brought to Paris, seduced, and abandoned 404 

Domestics seduced by their masters and sent off 289 

Mistresses abandoned by their lovers, and having no other resource. 1425 

Another examination furnished some unaccountable exceptions to the ordinary 
reasons assigned for this choice of life. For instance, at the time of registration, 
there were three midwives, one artist, six instructresses of music, and three 
women having respectively permanent annual incomes of two hundred, five 
hundred, and one thousand francs. 

The ages of 3250 were as follows : 



Of 10 




11 




12 




13 




14 




15 




15 


to 20 


20 


" 30 


30 


" 40 


40 


" 50 


50 


" 60 


60 


" 65 



years old 



2 

3 

3 

6 

20 

51 

1250 

1909 

239 

60 

4 

3 



Of 4470 born at Paris, all were of the laboring classes except four. 
2332 could not sign their names. 
1780 " very badly. 
110 " well. 
248 ascertained nothing of. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 157 

Duchalelet considers the manufactories as the " centres of cor- 
ruption, of which we should deplore the pernicious eflects while 
admiring their productions." 

By statistics which probably would not be borne out elsewhere, 
he demonstrates that this class of women enjoy better health 
than mothers in general. The average of sickness to each is ten 
days per annum, for all maladies, and less than two and a half 
for those of a grave character. 

Society in the United States recognizes but two grades of 
female virtue. From the moment a woman becomes unchaste, 
the irrevocable decree of banishment from her former position 
goes forth against her, and she sinks at once to the lowest level 
in the social scale. Reformation becomes almost hopeless. The 
impassable gulf of public opinion is a far more effectual barrier 
to vice than the municipal severities which await the " fille 
inscrite." Virtue has but one language every where, but it is 
the greater or less degree, which regulates the moral existence 
of a community. The standard of public opinion in France, on 
this subject, is wddely different from that of the United States. 
Hence between the legalized prostitute and the pure wife, there 
exists a variety of social grades, each regulated by its own arbi- 
trary code of opinion, and each distinct in its own sphere. 

The influence of this sliding scale of morals is felt throughout 
the nation. It modifies every character, and penetrates to every 
fireside. To the student then, who would investigate the causes 
of national differences, it becomes an indispensable study. 

The woman who has sunk her virtue to the purely mercenary 
character of the public courtesan has become too degraded to 
have much influence in the ruin of society. She is the sad fruits, 
and not the cause of its corruption. It is widely diflerent when 
beauty, talent, wealth, and position combine their efforts to strew 
the path of vice with flowers. To the moralist there is but the 
one grand distinction, founded alike on the welfare of mankind 



158 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

and the behests of revelation. Whatever tends to disturb the 
sanctity of the institution of marriage, is so much weight thrown 
in the scale of corruption, and no extent of individual happiness 
that may occasionally arise from ties unsanctioned by God can 
compensate for the wrong done society. 

The term " Lorette" designates that class of women, who, by 
external decorum or temporary connections, are enabled to evade 
the dreadful position of " filles inscrites," to which otherwise 
their mode of livelihood would inevitably doom them. They are 
subdivided into several ranks, and can scarcely be distinguished, 
except at their own option, from the more virtuous classes of 
their sex. Vanity prompts many to make a display in dress 
and equipage that infallibly betrays their profession. But the 
newly arrived stranger would be slow to suspect that the young 
females, whom he meets in the most fashionable quarters, gener- 
ally in pairs, with miens so modest and toilets so simple, are 
but a superior class of prostitutes. If he watches them, he will 
find that they are on their way to the Valentino or some other 
ball-room, to which they all have free entrance. Let him enter, 
and he will perceive that their dress is in general in accordance 
with their manners, which are quiet, lady-like, and graceful. 
For an acquaintance, a formal introduction from a friend is 
necessary, and they exact and receive the same courtesy in pub- 
lic which would be shown to the virtuous. 

This is their external character while under the eyes of the 
police. It is not for me to lift the vail that covers their actual 
condition. But the licentiousness of this class is the more cor- 
rupting, because it is gilded with a refinement of manner and lan- 
guage that strips vulgarity of much of its repulsion, and too 
effectually conceals the poisonous reptile that lies coiled at its 
root. 

The majority of these style themselves "femmes galantes." 
In general,: they form relations of interest with some one man, 



PAEISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PRINCIPLES. 159 

from whom it becomes their greatest solicitude to hide their 
amours with their lovers in general. They often are capable of 
inspiring the deepest attachments, notwithstanding their known 
habits. 

The powers of captivation possessed by those who combine the 
graces and charms of a cultivated mind to personal beauty, and 
that perfection of toilet rarely found out of Paris, is prettily 
illustrated by the Blue Fairy tale of Stahl. 

" One day the Blue Fairy descended to earth with the courte- 
ous intention of distributing to all the young girls of the differ- 
ent nations the treasures of beauty which she brought with her. 

" Her dwarf Amaranth sounded his horn, and instantly a young 
girl of every nation presented herself at the foot of the Blue Fairy's 
throne. All these together made quite a crowd, as you will 
imagine. This happened a long time before the Revolution of 
July, 1830. 

" The good Blue Fairy said to her friends, ' I desire that you 
may not have cause to complain of the gifts I am about to present 
you. It is not in my power to give each of you the same thing, 
but if I were to make such a uniformity in my favors, would it 
not make them, less valuable ?' As time is precious to fairies, 
she said very little, ended her speech there, and proceeded to the 
dispensing her gifts. Nobody appeared annoyed at it. 

" She gave the young girl who represented all the Castiles, 
locks so black and long that she could make a mantilla of them. 

" To the Italian, she gave eyes as bright and burning as an 
eruption of Vesuvius in the middle of the night. 

" To the Turkish girl, a figure as round as the moon, and as 
soft as eider-down. 

" To the English girl, an aurora borealis to tint her cheeks, her 
lips, and shoulders. 

" To the German, teeth like her own, and that which is no 



160 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

more valuable than fine teeth, but which has its value — a tender 
heart all ready to love. 

" To the Russian, the dignity of a queen. 

" Then going into details, she put gayety on the lips of the 
Neapolitan — wit in the brain of the Irish girl — good sense in the 
heart of a Flemish girl ; and when nothing remained to be given, 
she arose to take her flight. 

" ' And I V said the Parisian to her — detaining her by the 
floating border of her blue tunic. 

'"I had forgotten you I' 

" ' Entirely forgotten, madam.' 

" ' You were too near me, and I did not see you. But what 
can I do now ? My bag of gifts is empty.' The fairy reflected 
an instant, then calling to her by a sign all these charming 
beauties, she said to them : 

" ' You are good, because you are beautiful — it remains for you 
to repair a great error of mine ; in my dispensation I have for- 
gotten your sister of Paris. 

" ' Let each one of you, I beg, share a part of the present I 
made her with our Parisian. You will lose little and bestow a 
great deal.' 

" Who could refuse a fairy, and above all, the Blue Fairy ? 
With that graciousness which happiness always confers, these 
girls approached in turn the forgotten Parisian, and threw her as 
they passed — one a part of her black hair, another a tint of her 
rosy complexion ; this one a beam of her joyousness, that what 
she could of her sensibility ; and so it happened that the Parisian, 
so poor, so obscure, so eclipsed by her sisters, found herself in an 
instant, by this generous division, richer and more attractively 
endowed than any of her companions." 

Foreign youth in Paris, apart from the moral restraints of 
domestic life, and isolated from those circles which formed at 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 16] 



*"%;;;(!» 4 ■ 




A MODERN ASPASIA 



162 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

once its safety and pleasure at home, is thrown into a focus of no 
ordinary temptations. The rules of the most select of these 
coteries are as rigid as those of the salons of the Faubourg St. 
Germain. To be admitted to their reunions, it is necessary to be 
properly presented. They form societies; they give the most 
sumptuous of dinners and the most attractive of soirees. Some 
allow full license of gambling, and a freedom of manners, seduct- 
ive to libertines who come to lose their money and their health ; 
while others, renowned artists themselves, collect about them the 
most distinguished names of France. The fact that Mile. Eachel 
has several children by different fathers, is no bar to her soirees 
being the most brilliant of this brilliant capital in point of male 
intellect, rivaled, perhaps, in this respect, only by those of George 
Sand. 

The race of Ninon d'Enclos is not extinct. The few that rise 
to the pinnacle of their demoralizing career establish rules as 
arbitrary and unalterable as those of the Modes and Persians. 
Some receive their friends only between ten and four o'clock in 
the day, devoting their evenings to the society of their chosen 
lovers, whom they frequently support, and in visiting places of 
amusement. 

One of the strangest features of this depravity, and illustrative 
of a harmony in degradation scarcely conceivable, were it not 
recorded by Duchatelet, is the formation by the elite of these 
courtesans of a clientage, subject to the following conditions : 
They receive only married men, mutually acquainted, to the 
number even of fifty. The circle once formed, no new member 
can be admitted, except by the presentation of several of the 
habitues, and the consent of all ; and should any one become a 
widower he is at once expelled. 

Let not the grand ladies of society be deluded into the idea that 
the rules of conventional morality are solely their property. The 
audacious complaint of the Parisian mistress, who one day said to 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 163 

her lover, " When will you cease to compromise me ? You still 
continue to appear in public with your wife," will rectify this 
error. 

What has been the book of the season ? The history of a 
Lorette. What has been the play of the season ? Her life dra- 
matized by the genius of Dumas. It ran one hundred successive 
nights, producing more than three hundred thousand francs. 
Week after week has the Vaudeville been crowded by a fashion- 
able audience, of whom not a few were obliged to engage their 
seats fifteen days in advance. I have seen gray-headed men and 
women, as well as the young and sympathetic, weep like children 
as they gazed upon the fictitious scenes of what was sorrowful 
reality to this erring girl. Her life was, after all marked by no 
unusual incident. It was happier than the common lot, because 
she died before old age brought with it that decay, to them more 
dreadful than death itself. The toy of Paris while living, now 
that she is in her grave, she has called forth a sympathy and 
created an interest, that a Howard or a Dix might in vain labor 
to excite in the cause of afflicted humanity. True, there ig a moral 
in her life. There is in every life. Of such as hers, the Aspasia of her 
age, the friend of the Prince of Conde and of Madame de Main- 
tenon, long since said, with a deep sigh of regret, as she recalled 
her career, " Had any one proposed to me such an existence, I 
should have died of fright and grief." If such be the deliberate con- 
clusion of her, who, the slave of one passion, preserved to an age 
seldom attained,, wealth, beauty, and an intellect that made her 
the idol of numerous friends, what must be the reality of those lesser 
stars who are bought and sold as cattle by the beauty of their limbs 
and the freshness of their years? The name of this frail one was, 
singularly enough, Marie Madeleine (Mary Magdalen), though 
she adopted another while living. Her education that of a 
peasant girl. Once launched on the sea of Parisian dissipation, 
her rare beauty and rarer taste made her the butterfly idol of the 



164 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

hour. She dressed magnificently, but with perfect propriety. She 
expended more than one hundred thousand francs a year, and was 
ever in debt. Her diamonds, horses, and cashmeres were the 
envy and admiration of the female world. The luxury of her 
apartments it would be difficult to describe. They were all that 
wealth and art could produce even in Paris. The numerous 
articles of her toilet were of gold or silver, bearing the initials 
and crests of the titled donors. Furniture of rose-wood, and buhl. 
Gobelin carpets, vases of Sevres and China, statuettes of Dresden, 
and the most exquisite paintings of Saxony, hangings of satin, 
velvet, and lace, give but a faint idea of the sumptuousness with 
which she was surrounded. The same clock which had sounded 
the hours for Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barri 
struck for her likewise the passing of time. The most beautiful 
works of modern art were intermingled with the rarest antiques, 
with that nice perfection of the coquetry of beauty, that none 
but the beautiful possess. It is true she ruined those who paid 
for this luxury, but she astonished the most refined of her sex by 
the extent to which she carried the costly finish of the minutest 
details of her wardrobe and toilet. A style of living like this 
is not uncommon among the Lorettes, though few attain to the 
magnificence with which she was surrounded. 

She was consumptive, and the physicians who attended her, 
say she desired death to hasten her release from a life which, 
with its accumulated elegancies, was but a weary burden. Her 
wish was soon accomplished, for she died at twenty-one. Du- 
mas has made a touching tale of her experience. To what 
extent he has idealized, it is difficult to ascertain. There are no 
improbabilities, and the story is in a few words as follows : 

Marie was loved by a young man, who finally won her heart 
by the tender interest he manifested in her health, the only gen- 
uine sentiments of affection that she had ever experienced. The 
new and purer sentiments thus awakened, led her to regard her 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 165 

past ]ife "with horror. She persuaded her lover to retire with 
her to a village near Paris, where the scenes of rustic beauty 
recalled to her the innocence of her earlier years. In contrast 
with what she had been, this was virtue, and it brought her 
peace and a partial restoration to health, Dumas, however, 
with that spirit which is the bane of the literature of his coun- 
try, instead of depicting the chaste joys which are the evidence 
of true affection, debases the passion of love by a picture of delir- 
ious sensuality, which, if true, iTiust have inevitably led to satiety 
and disgust. So thinks the father of Armand, her lover, who 
has discovered their retreat, and, scandalized at the position of 
his son, in vain endeavors to withdraw him from his infatuation. 
As a last resource, he visits Marie, appeals to her love for Ar- 
mand, and, finally, makes her promise to leave him in a way 
that any return shall become impossible. Marie fulfills her 
promise by suddenly returning to her former life, plunging into 
dissipation with a reckless determination to abridge her misera- 
ble existence. Armand, believing her false and perfidious, leaves 
the country in despair. Before his return she dies, and not till 
then does he learn the real motive of her inconstancy. 

Such is the heroine and such the tale ; a type of that class of 
literature which has in France the same relative influence and 
success, as do in America the equally dramatic, but far more 
moral writings of Hawthorne or Longfellow. Bulwer in the 
Caxtons does justice to the character of the light literature of 
France. It saps the very foundation of chastity. Another class 
of writers must arise, before this spring of pollution will give 
forth cleansing waters. Balzac is the favorite of ladies. Brill- 
iant, witty, and keen, overflowing with that quality so essential 
to success among those who themselves so thoroughly exemplify 
it, he becomes the more dangerous from being so " spirituel." 
His amusing caricature of " The Little Miseries of Married 
Life," a book elegantly got up, terminates with the moral, that 



166 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

the cure consists in each party, leaving the other in perfect 
freedom to form such liaisons as fancy suggests, thus creating 
the anomalous domestic state of " menages a quatre." I quote 
the text, " C'est qiCil rCy a cVheureux que les menages a 
quatre'' 

What adds to the interest of " La Dame aux Camelias," is 
the fact that the accomplished actress who fills the role of 
Marie recalls, in her own life, many striking incidents of her's 
whose character she represents. Like her she is consumptive, 
and has shortened her days by dissipation. It is said, also, 
that the principal friend of Marie has become her's. She dis- 
plays rich jewels, at all events. Her husband, from whom 
she has been separated seven years, sits in front as leader of 
the orchestra. I am told, when Dumas asked her to play the 
part of Marie, she said to him, " Pray, how do these creatures 
dress ?" 

There is yet another class of these females, blending in some 
degree with that of Lorettes, yet in the main, distinct. I refer 
to mistresses. Their influence is felt from the Tuileries to the 
meanest hovel, Louis Napoleon, false at all events in this 
point to the example of his uncle, sets a pernicious example to 
the nation of avowed concubinage. The facility with which 
these relations are formed, and the ease with which they are 
ruptured, is a serious bar to matrimony, which by French law 
once entered into, can never be dissolved, whatever causes of 
misery may arise. The severity of the statute doubtless has its 
weight in producing the too general state of concubinage. In 
1850, the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births in Paris 
was one in four ; some years it is greater. It has reached one 
in two ; throughout France, it is one to thirteen. 

In thirty-three years there have been two million two hundred 
and eighty-seven thousand nine hundred and forty-four illegiti- 
mate births. These figures, however, do not furnish the same 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 167 

guide as to the number of ephemeral unions that they would to 
those of marriages, from the fact that the proportion of children 
born to the former is much less than to the latter. Truth, how- 
ever, constrains the admission that they often give evidence of a' 
sincerity of afiection not always to be witnessed in the married 
state. These connections are more common in cities than in the 
country, and among the poorer classes spring rather from motives 
of temporary interest or convenience, than from libertinism. Un- 
fortunately for the sacred ties of family, the government makes 
itself literally a nursing mother to the fruits of these unions ; 
and by its mistaken generosity not only deprives concubinage of 
one of its most powerful checks, but undermines the parental 
sentiment. 

The number of foundling hospitals has greatly decreased with- 
in twenty years, but the desire to prevent infanticide still keeps 
in existence more than one hundred and fifty throughout France. 
The government give encouragement to those who will retain 
their children, but receive all who are abandoned by their 
parents. Previous to 1837 no questions were asked, and no one 
was seen ; the infant was received in a " tour,''' a sort of moving 
box, which, once turned, shut out the child forever from the 
sight of its mother, unless she formally reclaimed it. These 
" tours" were abolished, and certificates of abandonment, signed 
by a commissary of police, required. This compelled the parents 
to acknowledge their intention. The result of the closing of the 
" tours" showed so rapidly an increase of infanticide, that the 
clandestine reception has been lately restored. Mothers, after 
abandoning their children, frequently present themselves at the 
hospitals as nurses, with the very dubious chance of being paid 
for the care of their own infants. Nurses receive from four to 
eight francs per month, and the children are taken to their 
homes in the country. At the expiration of two years they 
are at liberty to give them up, when, if no other nurses can be 



168 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

secured, they are sent to the orphan department. The children 
are provided for until they are twenty-one years of age. The 
estahlishment for them of agricultural colonies has been found 
beneficial, both in point of health and education. The number 
received at the " Hospice des Enfants Trouves," at Paris, during 
the past ten years, is fifty-one thousand four hundred and fifty- 
seven — an annual average of five thousand one hundred and 
forty-five. The total number placed out at nurse in 1850, was 
twenty- two thousand six hundred and fifteen. The expense of 
this establishment for the ten years ending in 1851, has been 
$3,464,732, and the average mortality one in four. 

By these institutions the government undoubtedly prevent 
infanticide to a certain extent. But to what degree of moral 
abasement or personal destitution must those be reduced who 
leave to the authorities only the dreadful alternative of pre- 
serving life by the destruction of the maternal instinct I An 
American may well be pardoned for doubting the policy, in 
every point of view, of so effectually screening the individual 
from the results of crime or improvidence, at the expense of the 
State. 

In extenuation of the depravity of the lower classes, there are 
to be pleaded ignorance and misery. Among the higher, a per- 
verted moral education and extraordinary temptation. 

That this corruption is, to a great extent, owing to the literature 
most in vogue, is evident to any one who studies its character. 
The following extracts, drawing a parallel between wife and 
mistress, is from the pen of an accomplished writer, Leon Gozlan. 
It is taken from a work which embodies the first literary talent 
of France, illustrated by the beautiful and amusing productions 
of the pencil of Gavarni. It is in every respect a book of" luxe." 
I mention this simply to show that the sentiments quoted are not, 
as in America or England, the mercenary productions of unprinci- 
pled authors, who seek refuge in obscurity from offended public 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FEENCH PRINCIPLES. 169 



opinion, but the offspring of accomplished minds, and paraded 
before the pubhc with the luxury and freedom which are solely 
the birthright of legitimacy. 

" Mistress. — This word has no exact equivalent, in the ma- 
jority of other languages, for the reason, that the object which it 
indicates with other nations is not, as with the French, a being 
who loves and is loved. Foreigners have borrowed from the 
coarse vocabulary of sensuality, terms more or less wounding, to 
indicate the woman chosen from all others — whom in France 
we call a mistress. Their unworthy epithets pitilessly dishonor 
what ours elevates : — they stain with infamy that which we 
adorn with flowers ; — they bespatter with insult the brow which 
we crown. "With them, the mistress is still the ancient slave, 
standing in the chimney-corner, or crouching in the shadow of 
the marble steps of the palace ; but with us the mistress pre- 
cedes chivalry and royalty, she followed Renaud and Tancred 
to the Crusades, she shared the throne with Charles YIL, Francis 
I., Henry III., Henry IV. — Agnes Sorel, Diana of Poitiers, Ga- 
brielle, Montespan, noble women — loving hearts — charming 
geniuses I Without them, the princes whom they ruled would 
have had neither courage, delicacy, loyalty, nor distinction. 
They would only have been kings' 

''■Wife. — I consider the wife in contradistinction to the mis- 
tress, as representing the solid, noble, and useful side of life — the 
architectural side as it were — without which there would be for 
man neither repose, shelter, nor dignity. 

" She is the healthy fruit which contains all the embryos (or 
buds) of family and society. 

" Take away the wife and you almost annihilate the mother, 
not merely she who produces children, but she whose mission it 
is to love them tenderly, to bring them up, to make of them men 
and citizens. Thus a woman, in marriage, is nothing less than 

H 



170 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PRINCIPLES. 

society itself, because it is she who makes its force, its greatness, 
its support, and its continuance. 

" This is what I think of the mistress — she is the young and 
smiling side of life, its month of May, its spirit, its fresh poetry, 
imagination I — 

" Take away the mistress, and you necessarily take away all 
the grace and beauty which imagination, poetry, and genius give 
birth to in the sphere of ideality, that is, the arts. Thus it can 
easily be shown that the finest works (selected by chance) in 
painting, sculpture, and poetry, were inspired by those independ- 
ent women whom, in the present day, we call mistresses. I 
will not quote ; — I should have to quote all — to inclose the 
whole world of art, in quotation marks. This is a truth easily 
proved, a truth rather wounding to the wife, but why should she 
be wounded ? She is reason, the mistress is only wit ; she is 
order, the mistress only enthusiasm ; she is good sense, the mis- 
tress only delirium ; she is the earth, the mistress only heaven ; 
not — let me hasten to explain — not the heaven to which we 
aspire for our good deeds, but that where we should desire to go 
to do no sort of deed, not even a good one." 

The same author, after dividing mistresses into two general 
classes, viz., those who love you, and those who love your money, 
subdivides the last as follow s : 

"Those who inhabit the Rue de Grammont at three hundred 
francs a month, gloves, and flowers. 

" Rue du Holder, four hundred francs a month, and a groom. 

" Rue Saint Lazare and Mont Blanc, five hundred francs a 
month, and a one-horse carriage. 

" Faubourg du Roule, two thousand francs a month, the pa- 
villion of a hotel, two carriages, a cook, a footman, and two 
horses. 

" To complete the list, it is necessary to cite those who love, 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



for their money, princes and dukes, and who are supported in 
corresponding style." 

These are the females to be seen daily in the Champs Elysees, 
and at their boxes at the Grand Opera or the Italiens, rivaling in 
equipage and dress, and excelling in beauty, aU others of theii' 
sex. 

Unfortunately, there is still another shade of immorality, of 
darker hue, having its source equally in the strongest passions 
and purest sentiments of the human heart. It is the fearful re- 
venge nature takes for her violatad laws, whenever the principle 
of religion is not sufficiently strong to bind it in chains. To trace 
it to its origin, we must begin with the system of education. In 
France, toward both sexes, it is one of restraint. The girls are 
either educated by governesses, or placed in boarding-schools, where 
they are kept in rigid seclusion. The boys are similarly treated. 
The external world is regarded as one wOiolly of depravity, from 
the corruption of which the chief security is in ignorance, or bolts 
and bars. I know no more pitiable sight in Paris, when con- 
trasted with the free and buoyant spirits of American youth, than 
the long double files of boys in uniform belonging to the several 
schools, paraded undar the inspection of their teachers, through 
the public gardens for air and exercise. They remind me, as in 
long files they drag along their spiritless limbs of the sluggish 
crawling of caterpillars. There is no liveliness of tongue or man- 
ner. Night and day they are guarded as securely as if they were 
criminals. The same preventive system, that obtains in every 
department of the government, prevents them from acquiring 
those habits of self-reliance and early development of character, 
to be seen in the youth of the United States. It is true the 
temptations are greater. But the result shows that what is gain- 
ed in present security, is lost in ultimate power of resistance. 
They are not trusted. Consequently, the firmest basis of virtue 



172 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

is wanting. Curiosity and desire are awakened, and I have the 
best French authority for ascribing the dissipations into which, 
the youth almost invariably plunge as soon as manhood brings 
them liberty, to the restraint of their school days. In the United 
States it has passed almost into a proverb, that ministers' children 
become the most dissipated men ; but it is only in instances 
where severity supersedes reason. 

Confinement being more natural to girls, is less to be depre- 
cated ; still, it is the actual application of suspicion in lieu of 
confidence. They are carefully screened from all outward evils, 
but in that knowledge, which is in general reserved with us for 
riper years, they are early adepts. The mind becomes familiar- 
ized to a standard of virtue very different from that which 
regulates the conduct of American mothers. While there are 
scarcely any theoretical concealments in families of what must 
sooner or later be known, a conventional platform of morality is 
erected on a foundation of sand. The reverse of the legal rule, 
that every one is innocent until proved guilty, sways the minds 
of the guardians of youth. They are considered guilty, unless 
kn«wn to be innocent. Hence they must ever be in sight. No 
better germ for intrigue could be devised ; for such is the infir- 
mity of human nature, that what is prohibited becomes doubly 
desirable. 

In America, mothers rely upon the principles of virtue im- 
planted by them from infancy in their children for their security 
The young of both sexes mix freely together. If there can be 
shown to result from this confidence, and early accustoming 
them to mingle in the amusements of their years, a condition of 
things in after-life such as no one disavows to exist in France, 
then it will be well to practice more restraint. There is, in the 
United States, a class of young men to whom chastity is as dear 
as truth. Their characters are due to their early association? 
with the pure of that sex, which gives them mothers and sisters. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 173 

Female virtue is as strong in their honor as in its own innocence. 
To assert this in France would cause a smile of incredulity. 
Such differences does education produce in natures essentially 
the same. 

The French girl is fenced in on every side by a rigid con- 
ventionality based upon distrust of the male sex. She can not 
converse with a friend or even a relative, more distant than a 
brother, except in sight of her parents or appointed guardians. 
She never appears alone in the streets. In society she is fet- 
tered to observances that render her as isolated as the inmate of 
a harem. The governess of my children, whose family bears 
one of the most distinguished of the ancient names of France, 
but who are now so reduced, that the sole choice left her was 
either a convent or to gain her own subsistence, was a single 
lady, and not particularly youthful. Wishing one evening to 
visit a friend who lived in the vicinity, she accepted my escort, 
but when within a square or so of the house, she requested me 
to leave her, as it would compromise her were she seen with a 
gentleman not of her family. 

Another single lady of rank, of sufficient years to be entitled to 
some of the liberties of a Madame, told me that when she first 
appeared alone in the street, she blushed and felt as if every body 
was looking at her for doing something wrong. 

Marriage becomes their declaration of independence. A young, 
timid, modest girl, whose heart would palpitate at the thought 
of an infringement of the slightest of these rules of conventional 
etiquette, blooms at once into an experienced matron, versed in 
all the arts of the world. Her first object has been to obtain 
freedom. In this she is fully successful. The action which m 
an American girl would be construed only as innocence, would 
ruin the reputation of her French sister. The reverse becomes 
true after marriage. No American woman could escape censure 
were she to follow the example of a French wife. 



174 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

Affection has no part or lot in a French marriage. Where it 
exists, it is only as an exception to the rule. The union is based 
on wealth or position. I am assured by the sex that has the 
most at stake, that the question invariably in relation to the lady, 
is, not whether she is beautiful or deformed, good or bad, but 
what is the amount of her " dot,'' or dowry, to which, in addi- 
tion, they sometimes inquire if she have any scrofulous taint. 
Briefly, they are marriages of convenience. The business is one 
of negotiation between the gentleman and the parents of the in- 
tended. She may not even know that there is such an event 
in contemplation until her fate is decided. The liberty which is 
in prospect, contrasting so sweetly Avith present confinement, 
undoubtedly has much weight in reconciling the minds of the 
maidens to a custom which, in the United States, would be con- 
sidered an intolerable tyranny. 

Sixty and sixteen are thus often brought together. The first 
marriage I witnessed was of a couple who had between them 
well-nigh that difference of years. Strange to say, while the 
priest was pronouncing their nuptial benediction in one part of 
the church, a funeral was in progress in another. 

French hearts can no more subsist without love than their 
neighbors. Indeed, impulsive and sympathetic, the necessity of 
an emotion is a portion of their nature. It is easy to perceive 
what becomes of a beauty without dower. The plain, God help 
them I He often does ; for hopeless of success in human love, 
they obtain that consolation in religion that nothing else can 
bestow. 

Those who marry, love their partners if they can. If not, 
somebody else. Appearances, however, must be preserved. A 
French woman would die with shame to be supposed to be capa- 
ble of an elopement. That would be a violation of the proprieties 
of life. She has no scruples, however, as to receiving her lover 
under her husband's roof, provid^^d he does not know it. An 



1 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 175 

English woman will seldom continue to deceive one man, when 
her heart is another's, ^he considers it a lesser sin to be true to 
her affection, than to eat the bread of the man she betrays. Ex- 
traordinary as it may appear, you will hear the former abuse, 
without stint, the latter, not for having a lover, but for proclaim- 
ing the fact. 

Where there is so much need for it, there is always much 
mutual discretion. Husbands and wives are blind where all other 
eyes are open. There is no violation of faith. The one bargained 
for liberty, the other for money ; love would be welcomed were 
he to make his home with them. Not arriving, each, like Celebs, 
goes in quest of a companion 

The caricaturists show up the condition of domestic affairs in 
many amusing ways. I have before me an evening paper, con- 
taining a print of two ladies of the " haut ton," in conversation. 
One says, " Yes, my dear, my husband has had the infamy to 
bring this creature into my house, under my eyes I and that when 
he knows the only affection I have in the world is two hundred 
leagues from here I" 

The other replies — " Men are cowards I" 

Balzac's Philosophy of Conjugal Life in Paris, has an engrav- 
ing of a tender scene between an enamored couple, the lady ex- 
claiming, " My friend, I sacrifice to you all I owe to the best of 
husbands. If you ever deceive me, Maurice, ! this would be 
very bad I" 

" Le meilleur des maris," and " Le bon Dieu" of a French 
intriguante are pronounced in the same tone, and with equal re- 
spect, and each is about equally distant from the heart. 

I would not be understood as implying there are no happy and 
true households. Far from it. There are undoubtedly very many. 
Nevertheless, I describe a reality which no one in France pretends 
to disguise. Yet I am constrained to believe that, in proportion 
as a certain class of my own countrywomen imitate the fashion- 



176 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

able follies of Paris, they acquire a taste also for its corruptions. 
A friend, whose experience in his native city led him somewhat 
harshly to declare he Avould never marry one of his own country- 
women, after being initiated into certain circles in New York, to 
which his title and position made him welcome, declared that 
city to be less moral than Paris. 

Every man is believed to have his mistress. It does not follow 
that there are no exceptions, only that no amount of argument 
could induce the belief It would require as much circumstan- 
tial and positive evidence to show the contrary here, as it would 
with us to prove that a married man kept one. The virtue of 
mankind, from Adam down, has never been remarkable for its 
sternness, in sight of the blandishments of Eve and her descend- 
ants. My readers, then, need be under no fears of a breach of 
charity, in believing that a Parisian, after showing his filial 
respect in making a marriage of convenience, seldom fails to con- 
sole himself by the more agreeable tie of love. 

In a little comedy frequently performed at the French theatre, 
in which is exposed the condition of domestic life, arising from 
the substitution of mistress for Avife, the plot terminates, after a 
quarrel, in the marriage of the couple. This is called " The End 
of the Romance." 

Whether there be more romance or not in illegal than in legal 
unions, moralists have found it expedient to establish societies 
for the promotion of marriages and the legitimation of children. 
That of St. Franfois Regis was established in 1826. Up to Janu- 
ary 1, 1852, it had taken cognizance of twenty-three thousand 
two hundred and thirty-four disorderly households, and had 
sought to recall to religion and good morals forty-six thousand 
four hundred and sixty-eight individuals. During that period it 
had succeeded in procuring the legitimation of seventeen thou- 
sand children. Of one thousand two hundred and thirty-four 
marriages which it had induced among couples living in concu- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 177 

biiiage, eight hundred and sixty-one had been in that state from 
one to ten years, sixty-eight from ten to fifteen years, twenty- 
eight from fifteen to twenty years, twenty-one from twenty to 
thirty years, and ten from thirty to forty years. Several of the 
parties were from sixty to eighty years of age, and one couple 
had lived together forty years and three months previous to their 
legalized union. 

I can not close this chapter without relating, on the authority 
of Madame de Crequy, an historical fact, illustrative of the idio- 
syncrasy of taste of French ladies. After the first Revolution 
there was formed a society which imitated the costumes and 
manners of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was at a period 
when much was said about patriotism and the want of children 
for the Republic. The ladies all aspired to the glory of produ- 
cing citizens. Those who were "enceinte" made the greatest 
possible public display of their condition, while those less fortu- 
nate invented a style of dress for the street, which should at least 
give them that reputation. The time and money usually ex- 
pended in dressing the hair, were devoted in preference to this 
novel fashion. 



CHAPTER IX 



AMUSEMENTS. 



Unquestionably to an American the most "bizarre" of all 
the sights of Paris is a Carnival Ball at the Grand Opera. The 
pit being boarded over, and made level with the stage, forms a 
ball-room of magnificent proportions. The boxes, unless pre- 
viously hired, are free to the public. The orchestra, two hun- 
dred and more in number, led by the famous Musard, is a com- 
bination of the best musical talent of France. These balls com- 
mence at midnight, and terminate at six o'clock, Sunday morn- 
ings. Costumes or dominoes and masks are required of women, 
but men can enter in plain clothes ; the former are free, the lat- 
ter pay two dollars for admission. 




1 ASKED KALL AT THE GTwVND OPEKA. 



The attempt to give an accurate idea of the mad, bewildering 
scene, as the visitor first enters the gorgeous hall, would be futile. 
His eyes are dazzled by the lights, his ears stunned by the united 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PRINCIPLES. 179 




180 PxVRlSlAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

shouts and merriment of thousands of throats, and his senses be- 
wildered by the variety of costumes, colors, and shapes, which are 
whirling with frightful activity and extravagant gestures through 
the mazes of waltz, polka, or quadrille. Collect specimens of 
all the costumes from Adam and Eve down (of course I exclude 
the fig-leaves), — of every nation under the sun, and add to them 
every variety and shade of color ; intermingle monsters from the 
briny deep ; sprinkle them thick with shapes hot from Tantalus ; 
invent figures which have no likeness in any created thing ; gal- 
vanize the whole, so that every tongue, muscle, limb, and linea- 
ment, shall assume a convulsive activity that threatens imme- 
diate rupture, and make the mass move in harmony with the 
■wild, thrilling, furious notes of a band, that could lend excite- 
ment to the very stones themselves, and you would still fail to 
realize the scene. 

The favorite costume among the women is a species of simpli- 
fied or reformed Bloomerism, consisting of (I proceed upward), 
satin slippers, silk stockings to the knee, light satin or silk 
breeches, the legs of different colors, and the whole surmounted 
by a sort of semi-shirt, or open chemise, beautifully laced, and 
leaving mostly in "2^'^^^'^^ naturalibns" that portion of the cor- 
poreal charms which ladies, in fashionable assemblies, are ever 
reluctant to hide when there is any thing to display. These cos- 
tumes vary according to the fancies of the wearers, but their 
numbers indicate the natural desire of the sex to escape the 
thralldom of petticoats ; a weakness I would by no means counsel 
them to yield to, as it gives too palpable evidence that in trou- 
sers they are greatly inferior in grace to man. Indeed, it is most 
amusing to witness their attempts at masculine activity or manly 
dignity, which are sure to terminate in a duck-like pantomime, 
showing that they are excellent waddlers, but bad walkers. The 
dress, however, allowed full liberty of motion, in which, I sup- 
posed, consisted its charm, for I have seen several avail them- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 181 

selves of it, by springing upon the backs of their partners ; and 
in one instance, one, by no means of ethereal lightness, seated 
herself upon the shoulders of her gallant, and there, triumphant, 
made him finish the two-storied quadrille. 

Every species of license, not purely beastly, is allowed ; loving 
embraces, jovial slaps, and seductive pinches, meet with no 
chilling response ; kisses explode on all sides like the popping 
of champagne corks ; jokes fly about like swallows in spring- 
time ; " double-entendres" and "jeux d'esprits" fall as thick and 
fast as hail. Amid all the "giving as good as he sends," perfect 
good-humor prevails. The lowest apologize for accidents with 
the grace of drawing-rooms. In a rush by some frolicsome 
damsels, I was borne back so suddenly, that my heel came down 
with violence upon the toe of my neighbor in the rear ; the pain 
was so sudden, that nature found instant relief in the common, 
but unmentionable French exclamation in all such cases known 
and approved ; but the words were not cold on his tongue when 
he turned to me and apologized, although I w^as the innocent 
aggressor. 

Hebrews, Greeks, and E.omans, were intermining like old and 
familiar friends, with the courtiers of Louis XIV., and "distin- 
gues" of our day. There was a sprinkling of Iroquois, High- 
landers, and all the picturesque garbs of Europe. The ward- 
robes of every theatre must have been in requisition for this 
" solemnite." It afforded me an opportunity of practically as- 
certaining that, in respect to them decidedly, " Distance lends 
enchantment to the view." Amid the variety and oddity dis- 
played, there seemed to be no room for any thing new, when, 
of a sudden there arose a shout of terror, followed by a recoil 
among all the masks on the floor. Twelve non-descript devils 
in shining black suits, fitting tight to their skins, with long green 
hair falling about their waists, fiery red faces and horns, tails of 
the same color, barbed, and more than a fathom in length, had 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



burst into the circle of dancers, overturning all in their way, and 
leaping and shrieking in a manner so vigorous and unexpected, 
that the throng, for the instant seemed impressed with the idea, 
that Satan had actually sent them a deputation to see how his 
work was going on. Men or demons, they soon fraternized with 
the prettiest girls, and with tails in hand, actively illustrated the 
vulgar contortions of a dance I shall not attempt to describe. 
They were numbered from one to twelve on their backs, in huge 
white letters. Their partners discriminated them as devil num- 
ber one, and so on through the complement of fiends. Another 
mask, which kept about it a large circle of admirers, was what 
Yankees call a " six-footer," clad in a lank cotton night-gown, 
with a night-cap on of the same material. At every pause of 
the orchestra there arose a shout of applause, that fell upon the 
ear like a roll of surf upon the strand. 

Fancy costumes are prohibited from entering the saloon. 
Here assemble the intriguantes in domino and mask, who vie-' 
timize or perplex the verdant of the other gender. It is impossi- 
ble in this guise to detect 
the age, looks, and often the 
sex of the wearer. As most 
who sport this disguise, do it 
to extract suppers or money 
from strangers, many not very 
edifying scenes are to be wit- 
nessed, if one is curious to 
observe all the license these 
balls develope. Sometimes ad- 
ventures more comical than 
disreputable are the result. 
1 had a friend whose size 
admirably qualified him for 
the feminine garb. He ac- 




AN INTRIGUANTE. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



183 




A CARNIVAL SUPPKK. 



cordiiigly procured one, took lessons from a lady in the use of 
a fan, and made 
his way to the 
ball, where he 
soon had a circle 
ofadmirers. One 
gentl«nan well 
known to him, 
not only com- 
plimented him 
upon his small 
feet and hands, 
but loaded him 
with bon-bons, and insisted on being his partner in every dance. 
He prosecuted his suit most perse veringly, and desired an in- 
terview. The mask not being able otherwise to disembarrass 
himself of his admirer, slipped out, jumped into a coach, and 
started for home. He had not got far before he saw his amorous 
friend in full chase, and when he arrived at his own door, his 
late partner was close by. Waiting till he came up, he took off 
his disguise, and disclosed his well known features, to the infi- 
nite chagrin and anger of his partner, who had said to him too 
many foolish things ever to be able to look upon him compla- 
cently again. 

Although the female frequenters of these balls are, m general, 
low characters, yet I am assured, on respectable authority, that 
parties from the Faubourg St. Germain sometimes go clandes- 
tinely, for a frolic. The curiosity of English and American 
ladies often takes them there ; but unless sheltered from the 
universal license in private boxes, it is indiscreet, if not deserv- 
ing a worse name. No refined mind can, with pleasure, witness 
the destruction of all that is modest and lovely in woman, how- 
ever ludicrous may be the exhibition. To virtuous females these 



184 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

Saturnalia had better remain among the things unseen. The 
government require a per centage of the proceeds, for charitable 
objects ; this is not surprising, as they enlist lotteries in aid of 
religion. 

In striking contrast to this scene is one which I can recom- 
mend to all ladies. The Jardin d'Hiver forms one of the most 
charming places of resort, whether as a garden or a ball-room, 
possessed by any capital. Nowhere does Parisian taste display 
itself in more fanciful and chaste decorations. A light iron frame 
supports a front, which opens into a spacious vestibule. The 
vault is sustained by eight Doric columns. Thence the visitor 
passes into an extensive garden, protected above and on all sides 
from the external air by glass, tastefully set in an iron frame- 
work. A light and airy gallery, supported on iron columns, 
runs all along the interior. This is filled with flowers. The 
advertisements sometimes announce ten thousand camelias in 
bloom at once. Below is a garden fragrant with orange-trees 
and rare exotics, which, to quote from Galignani, " with the 
basins in the form of enormous sea-shells, cascades, statues, and 
groups, by the bloom and beauty of the scene, reminds the spec- 
tator of Tasso's enchanting description of Armida's garden. In- 
deed, but for the welcome absence of the tiger and cobra capello, 
it would need no great stretch of imagination to believe one's 
self transported to the most luxuriant regions of the East. Here 
the camelia, the yucca, and the cactus will meet the visitor's 
eye, in juxtaposition with the palm-tree, the araucamia, and the 
banana. An aviary filled with exotic birds is to the right ; in 
the centre of the garden is a grass-plot, extending to a romantic 
grotto ; while the few walls that connect some portions of the 
iron frame-work, are completely roofed with mirrors, and lined 
with passifloras and other creeping plants." The author of this 
extract had evidently never bewildered himself in the intermina- 
ble interlacings and dense foliage of an Eastern jungle, or he 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 185 

would never, for a moment, have conceived that glass and iron 
could cover their endless variety and gigantic proportions. The 
dwarfish representatives of hot-house culture, bear no better com- 
parison to the originals amid their native forests, than does the 
cage-born lion to his free-born brother, roaming at large in his 
native wilderness. However, I saw enough of tropical beauties, 
to recall many a delightful association with their more genial 
native climate. 

Nothing has been neglected for accommodation or refresh- 
ment. There are even places for various games. The price of 
admission to all this loveliness is but a franc. 

I was present at a ball given under the patronage of the Prin- 
cess Mathilde. The area was illuminated by sixteen thousand 
six hundred candles, four hundred lamps, and an electric light, 
so disposed as to give most brilliant perspectives in all directions. 
From the lofty gallery over the entrance, the effect W3.s singular.. 
The absorption of light by the vegetation was so great, that it 
gave the scene the appearance of an empyrean, viewed through 
a hazy atmosphere; the clusters of lights appearing to be so 
many firmaments, one succeeding the other in the illimitable 
distance, until the faintest twinkle proclaimed that human sight 
had reached its limit. 

There were present at least four or five thousand representa 
tives of the middling and higher classes of society at Paris 
besides the usual complement of strangers. I was struck with 
the lack of female beauty, when so much is to be met with in 
the street. There was a brilliant display of diamonds in the 
balcony of the Lady Patronesses. The ladies generally ranged 
themselves like so many wall-flowers on the circular seats around 
the transepts, which though forming somewhat of a barrier to 
social intercourse with the gentlemen, yet heightened the beauty 
of the coup-d'oeil upon entering. A band of music at the further 
extremity, concealed among the shrubbery, played alternately 



186 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FEENCH PRINCIPLES. 

with the orchestra for the dancers. The candles unfortunately 
kept up a constant shower of grease, so that in a little while 
most of the coats of the gentlemen looked as if their linen was 
making its way through numerous air-holes. 

From this ball I went to that of the Artists at the Opera 
Comique. Here the crowd was, if possible, greater, and the 
dancing from want of space much more restricted. The ladies 
present were the actresses of all the theatres, and it is but justice 
to say, that I have never seen assembled a more beautiful collec- 
tion of women. But what particularly attracted my attention 
was the exquisite beauty of their toilets. There was nothing 
overdone. Richness of material was beautifully blended witli 
simplicity of design. 

To see a Frenchman under his most amiable aspects, he must 
be visited at his places of amusements. Scattered throughout 
the city are halls for dancing, graduated in respectability by the 
fees of entrance. They are all frequented by Lorettes, who are 
admitted gratis. The best of the class is the Valentino, fitted 
up somewhat after the Moorish style, with pistol galleries, billiard 
tables, dynamometers, and tables of games of skill, the prizes 
being some articles of trifling value. The police are ever on the 
alert to prevent the dances from degenerating into indecencies. 
In the few that I have entered, there has been no indecorum. 
The toilets are those of the street, and hats are not removed. I 
have nowhere seen more graceful dancing, and if their uses were 
confined to the innocent gratification of this exercise, there 
could be little that was objectionable to urge against them. 

The most beautiful of the summer gardens devoted to this 
amusement is the Chateau des Fleurs. When illuminated it has 
the air of enchantment. But it would be wearisome and unsatis- 
factory to the reader for me to attempt to convey to him a cor- 
rect idea of the seductive taste displayed in these places. The 
numerous class that live in illicit domestic relations, or who pander 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 187 

to the passions of men, find in them those excitements of which 
their position makes them so covetous. The middle classes, with 
their families, frequent them to a considerable extent ; but what 
an American parent would view with horror or shame, would 
amuse a French mother. Under no circumstances can they be 
considered as favorable to morals ; and while the government 
exercises the most rigid precautions, to prevent the sale of any 
medicine which could be used as a poison, except under the re- 
sponsibility of a physician, and fines those who open schools 
without a license, it permits a thousand sources of corruption to 
the public morals to exist under its eye, seemingly believing 
that its highest duty is to amuse the people. Its principle, to 
regulate what it is forced to tolerate, is right. But there are 
some evils it is by no means forced to tolerate. Among them I 
would enumerate what I saw at the " Salle des Delices," which 1 
visited to witness the etiquette of the lowest of these resorts. 

The entrance fee was five cents " en consommation ;" this 
last phrase was unintelligible to me. It purported to be a 
masked ball — but there were no masks or costumes present, 
and the " en consommation" I soon deciphered to mean some- 
thing to drink, for the chief business was done at the bar. The 
dancing was decent, and the place orderly, as they all are, 
while the " Sergents de Ville" are in sight, and there are al- 
ways too many of the military on guard to admit of any contra- 
vention of public order. The hall was fdled with a rowdy look- 
ing class of young men, most of whom were smoking pipes. A 
girl of not more than twelve, with fine features, but whose man- 
ners showed that she already was familiar with vice, was perse- 
vering in smoking a cigar that made her sick. One table was 
filled with girls, some as young as eight, and one certainly not 
over six years of age, who with a party of boys, not one of whom 
I judged to be over twelve years old, were tossing off tumblers 
of abominable beer with all the convivial forms of old topers. 



188 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

The boys were also smoking pipes filled with the vilest tobacco. 
The girls having drunk enough to make themselves unsteady, 
joined in the dance. I turned away sickened at the scene, satis- 
fied that the Devil had his infant schools, as well as the Church. 

The Salle de Montesquieu affords a school of a different char- 
acter. It is the rendezvous of the sporting gentry and the arena 
of amateur and professional combatants. Upon entering I came 
upon a cloud of tobacco smoke, so dense as to cause me to gasp 
for breath. There was a numerous and in general well-dressed 
class of spectators, including several women who appeared to be 
respectable. The contests this evening were limited to a novel 
species of wrestling. Those who tried their skill were entirely 
naked, except to the last point of decency. There were some 
heavy throws, but there was no disposition to brutality. On 
the contrary, the spectators frequently called out "enough" to 
the panting champions. The lions of the evening were Messrs. 
Arpin and Turc, between whom the struggle was long and 
doubtful. One was at last handsomely thrown, and although 
he lost a considerable bet, besides the mortification of defeat, he 
walked up to his antagonist, shook his hands, and kissed him on 
each cheek, to signify that he entertained no animosity, and that 
it was fairly done. 

There was a boy of about fourteen present, who performed 
extraordinary feats of suppleness. He stood firmly on his feet, 
and bending backward touched the calves of his legs with his 
lips, and kissed the floor. He put his legs over his shoulders 
and walked on his hands. In short, he did all that could have 
been done with an India rubber manikin, frequently extorting 
involuntary exclamations of sympathy from the spectators, while 
he smiled at their tenderness. 

The drama plays the same relative part in the education of a 
Frenchman, that religion does in that of an American. The 
latter loves his meeting-house, and looks askant upon the thea- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 189 



tre ; the former, indifTerent to the church, or merely tolerating 
it, conid not exist without the play-house. It is his school of 
manners ; his forum of education ; his teacher of history ; the 
parent of his ideas ; a living monument, in which antiquity re- 
appears ill the present. He can. no more live without it than 
the American without his newspaper. It plays the most impor- 
tant role in his "Art de vivre," a science which in his own 
estimation exists only at Paris. It is the necessary superfluity. 
Saiiite Beuve gravely says, " The French public, who respect so 
few things, have preserved the 'religion' of the French theatre." 
Churches have been sacked and desecrated ; the clergy have 
been massacred or banished ; but the drama has triumphantly 
held its own, through every revolution, oftener giving law to 
society than imitating it. The same author, the popularity of 
whose " Causeries" attests how truly they reflect the public sen- 
timent, speaks thus : "When Paris recommences to amuse itself, 
it is not only a privileged class that is amused, but all classes 
profit and prosper. Paris then is in good train to save herself, 
and France with her. The theatres present the means of action 
the most direct, the most prompt, the most continuous, upon the 
masses. To abandon to chance the direction of^the theatres, 
would be to despise the custom and the exigencies of our nature, 
the energy of the French mind itself" He views it, properly 
directed, as a means of opposing the increasing national coarse- 
ness of manners, in which, he says, in many points we are fast 
becoming as rude as the English and Americans. Not for a 
moment contesting the superior polish of French manner, yet as 
an attentive observer, I must confess, that while he has not ex- 
aggerated the importance of the theatre in the estimation of his 
nation, its influence is not favorable to the moral welfare of soci- 
ety. If amusement be the highest aim of existence, the theatre 
has attained its correct position. But if useful and solid quali- 
ties, the purity of domestic life, and the development of correct 



190 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

principles, be of more importance to the human race, then the 
" art de vivre," as understood in France, is a moral imposture. 

Attracted by an advertisement of Comte's theatre for chil- 
dren in the Passage Choiseuil, which promised all '' new cats" in 
the play of " Puss in Boots," I entered, and found myself in a 
very indifferent building, though it had been' much patronized 
by the young Count of Paris, during the reign of Louis Philippe. 
The audience was chiefly composed of " bonnes" or nurses, hav- 
ing on an average about two children each in charge, some of 
whom had not certainly been long strangers to a draught from 
nature's fount ; and if I mistake not, a few were then employed 
in drawing nourishment therefrom. The parterre was in fact a 
very dirty nursery ; resounding with every cry compatible with 
the strength and variety of infantine lungs, except when the cur- 
tain was up. Every time it rose, there was a shout of joy, 
which subsided into occasional ejaculations of wonder and admi- 
ration at the efforts of the young actors, who really performed 
very creditably. There was a slight attempt to point a moral 
in two of the four plays, but to amuse by jokes, and ludicrous 
spectacles, or to frighten by hobgoblins and phantoms, was the 
chief object. In this M. Comte showed his accurate knowl- 
edge of the character of his audience, whether children, nurses, 
or parents. In one piece there was a bear hunt. The animal 
so frightened his pursuers that one climbed a tree, and the other 
fainted from fear. The bear turned him over with his nose, 
then approaching his head, smelt it, and expressed his contempt 
by imitating the usual performance of dogs at all corners with 
which their noses are satisfied. This was the " hit" of the even- 
ing, and was received with shouts of applause. 

The drop-curtain represented children engaged in a variety of 
frolics, one of which was giving a clyster to a cat. I have some 
doubts as to the propriety of mentioning these sights, but as those 
who take their children to this " reward of merit" will find such 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 191 

scenes are prominently displayed, it is but well that they should 
be forewarned. They are specimens of those anomalous ex- 
hibitions, so often met with in France, to the disgust of those 
whose education has not prepared them to overlook in the ridicu- 
lous what is really loathsome. The plays lasted until eleven 
o'clock, and were succeeded by a distribution, by the young gen- 
tleman who played the part of Puss, of numerous bon-bons, toys, 
and bouquets, among the juvenile audience, who appeared to 
enjoy the scramble and their prizes more than any thing else. 
It is hardly necessary to observe that none of these infants get to 
crib before midnight, though sleep had had for not a few more 
charms than even the wonderful cat. 

The love for spectacles, thus eaily fostered, begets a patience 
in riper years which to a " go-ahead" Yankee would be a physical 
impossibility. Those who purchase their tickets in the morning 
are required to pay about one fifth more than the evening rates. 
Consequently, the economical take their chance at the opening 
of the doors. To secure a place, on the performance of any 
attractive piece, it is necessary to go early and " faire la queue," 
literally to make tail, or stand in a line until the ticket-office 
opens. The arrangements at all public places are perfect in 
the respect of order. There is no crowding, either in the line or 
office ; only a few are admitted together, and when served, the 
sentinel passes in as many more. I have known individuals to 
stand six hours in these " queues" awaiting their turn. 

The most amusing theatre is the Montansier at the Palais 
Royal. None is better known among the bloods of Paris, for it 
is here some of the most celebrated mistresses make their debuts 
gratuitously, or even paying a bonus to the director for the privi- 
lege of exhibiting their attractions and making their market 
among the connoisseurs in female charms. Young girls who 
are carefully educated are x&ot allowed to visit this, or its rival, 
the Vaudeville. 



192 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

The pervading character of the pieces enacted upon the French 
stage is loose and corrupting. There are annually brought out 
between two and three hundred new plays. They are calculated 
to increase the prevailing sentiment of ridicule toward a deceived 
husband, and to enlist the sympathies in the success of the in- 
triguing of either sex. They also pander grossly to the taste for 
"double entendre" and wanton exposure of the female person. 
Indeed, in this last respect, the ballet corps use the light cos- 
tume, in which they exhibit their " poetry of motion," simply as 
an attractive auxiliary to their next to nude figures. Constantly 
there are sights and allusions which few American female cheeks 
could witness untinged, but which fail to produce a correspond- 
ing emotion among the ladies of this metropolis. There are ex- 
ceptions to this censure, and among them I could name three 
of the most successful pieces of the winter : " La Mariage de 
Victorine," by George Sand, in which the charming Rose Cheri 
appears at the Gymnase ; " Mdlle. de la Sagliere," by Sandeau ; 
and "Diane," a tale of Richelieu, both of which enjoy, successful 
runs at the Fran9aise. 

In two respects Yankee managers and shop-keepers can re- 
ceive useful hints from the French stage. The first, is in the 
excellent arrangement of lights, by the glare of which the eyes 
of the audience are not blinded as in the United States ; the 
second, is in the use of the drop-curtain for an illustrated adver- 
tising sheet, a sort of mammoth directory, from which the play- 
goers can derive information as to the sources of supply for al- 
most every want human flesh has inherited. The curtain in 
this manner produces an income to the manager, and is orna- 
mental enough for all scenic purposes. 

The poison of the French stage is the more subtle from being 
united with so much that is captivating to the senses and grati- 
fying to the intellect. That I am not alone in this judgment, 
the following extract from a late newspaper will show : " The 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 193 

President of the Republic has approved of a decree by the ex- 
Minister of the Interior, M. L. Faucher, dated October 12, by 
which it is decided, in order to attempt to remove the complaints 
made of the immoral and dangerous political tendency, and the 
literary imperfection of a great number of theatrical pieces, that 
the following prizes shall be annually given : A sum of five 
thousand francs to the author of a successful dramatic work in 
four or five acts, in prose or verse, represented at the Theatre 
Francais, and which shall be moral in character and brilliant 
in execution. A sum of three thousand francs, to a piece of the 
like character, of less than four acts, represented with success at 
the same theatre. A sum of five thousand francs to the author 
of the work in four or five acts, in prose or verse, represented 
wdth success at any theatre m Paris, or even if given for the 
first time in a provincial theatre, ' which shall be of a nature to 
serve in the instruction of the laboring classes, by the propaga- 
tion of sound ideas, and the spectacle of good examples.' A sum 
of three thousand francs to .the author of any such piece of less 
than four acts, represented with success in any Parisian or pro- 
vincial theatre. A commission, consisting of the Director of the 
Department of Fine Arts, of four members of the Academy, and 
of four members of the Commission of the Theatres, is to make 
a report on the pieces to be recompensed, and the minister is to 
choose the author from the list it is to present. The funds are 
to be taken from the subvention of the Theatre Fran9ais, and 
from the budget of the Fine Arts." It will be noticed that 
politics, quite as much as morals, are at the bottom of this effort 
to remedy the evil. 

The " Patrie" of April 20th contained the following paragraph. 
" This morning the directors of the theatres of Paris were con- 
voked by the Minister of the Interior. The minister had assem- 
bled them to express the intentions of the government, in respect 
to the lamentable tendencies of the present dramatic literature." 

1 



194 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



" In a few and concise words the minister explained how he 
understood the mission of the theatre and its influence upon 
manners, and he announced to the directors his resolution, firmly 
expressed, not to suffer longer upon the stage any work of a 
nature to excite the passions and corrupt the public mind." 

To sustain the unrivaled representations of the Grand Opera, 
the government gives annually, about $176,000 ; to the Italiens, 
$10,000 ; to the Opera Comique, about $50,000, and to the 
Theatre Fran^ais nearly an equal amount — making upward of 
$280,000 to support these schools of "taste and good language." 

In 1600 there was but one theatre at Paris, in 1791 there 
were fifty-one, in 1807 the number had decreased to thirty-three, 
which were further reduced by Napoleon to eight, compensation 
being made to those closed. Now there are four operas and 
twenty-five theatres, capable of accommodating thirty thousand 
spectators, beside eight circuses, that hold thirty-one thousand. 
These last are open only during the warmer months. Add to 
this list nine musical halls for concerts, sixteen for winter balls, 
eight gardens for summer balls, and a variety of dioramas, pano- 
ramas, and georamas, independent of the legion of ambulatory 
shows, and it will be conceded that the national taste has ample 
resources for its gratification. 

From 1807 to 1811 the annual receipts of the theatres aver- 
aged $920,000. In 1847 they reached, $1,920,000 ; in 1848, 
$1,120,000; in 1849, $1,220,000; and in 1850, $1,180,000. 
These sums are reported to the government, but it is believed 
they are underrated, as eight per cent, of their receipts is re- 
quired for charitable purposes. In 1849 the places of amuse- 
ment contributed to the hospitals and charitable institutions of 
the city $88,000. The number of actors and singers in Paris is 
estimated at two thousand and thirty-three, who average but 
$350 per annum, which, without other resources, must leave 
the majority in a condition approaching to penury. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 195 

The subsidy granted to the Theatre Fran^ais is to counter- 
act any decline of the public taste, and to preserve a school for 
the classic productions of French dramatic literature. Here are 
enacted the delightful comedies of Moliere and the refined trage- 
dies of Corneille and Racine, in a manner worthy of the genius 
of those authors. The part is given with such a fidehty of de- 
tail in costume and character, that the grave seems literally to 
give up its dead, who walk and speak among us as they did in 
life. True to nature and tradition in their minutest points, it 
may be questioned whether the vivid exposition of the brilliant 
corruption of the Court of Louis XV., reproducing, as in Adrienne, 
le Couvreur, scenes of intrigue gilded by the high-toned gal- 
lantry of the language of love of that era, is not demoralizing to 
the youth of the present day. This favorite play of Scribe's 
is founded upon the unfortunate passion of Adrienne, the first 
actress of France, for Maurice of Saxony, the most illustrious 
warrior of his age. It is a scandalous development of intrigue, 
pride, lust, revenge, and murder, unrelieved by better sentiments, 
unless the love of Adrienne for Maurice may bear this character. 
It is her fate, poisoned by her treacherous rival the Duchess of 
Bouillon, rather than her love, that excites the sympathy of the 
spectators. Rachel fills her role, and in the dying scene is so true 
to nature, that death itself might mistake the feint for reality. 

In one act the Theatre Franfaise is itself rolled back in history 
to 1730, and its green-room and side scenes turned toward the 
spectators. There appears in review, as in life, the theatrical 
stars of that day, with their train of noble friends, engaged in the 
scandalous pleasures of that corrupt epoch, and which in any, 
are better for all concerned with the curtain down than up. 
Among those who have the freedom of the green room is a 
reverend abbe, lover and retailer of scandal of the Duchess of 
Bouillon. He plays a part in his sacred habit by no means 
edifying to the friends of religion. 



196 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND TRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

The audience at this theatre, as may be supposed, is composed 
of the elite of the lovers of the dramatic art ; for it is here alone 
that Mile. Rachel by her genius revives the ancient glories of 
the great masters of French tragedy. I am told she is preparing 
herself to appear in the characters of Shakspeare. Her powers, 
great as they are, must eventually succomb to the life of dis- 
sipation and excitement which she leads. On the stage her 
action flashes like lightning. Her tone and gesture are fierce, 
quick, and startling. They electrify, but fail to excite sympathy. 
In one of her stormy passages, she was so carried away by her 
simulated passion, that she brought her foot down upon the 
stage-lights, crushing the glass chimneys and scattering them all 
around. She did not notice the accident, and the audience gave 
her a unanimous burst of applause. 

To my judgment, she appears to refine upon the emotions of 
the heart, as did Le Notre upon nature in gardens. She aston- 
ishes, but leaves no permanent impression beyond wonder at her 
art. Yet it is in the overstrained expression of the sentiments 
and passions, as in the stifi^ trimming of trees and prescribing right 
angles to vegetation, that French taste finds its highest gratifica- 
tion. 

The stage in France dates its origin as far back as 1402. Few 
who witness its present scenes would suppose that it owed its 
origin, if not directly, to the clergy, at least to the attempt to rep- 
resent in public the mysteries of the life of Christ. Such how- 
ever, is the fact. The first theatre, was in Trinity Hospital, E,ue 
St. Denis, a street that takes its name from the saint who is said 
to have walked through it after his execution, with his head 
under his arm, seeking a spot to his taste for a grave. He chose 
that which has since become the site of the Abbey of St. Denis. 
As an unbeliever remarked, the only difficulty would be in the 
jirU step. 

In the same street, says Froissart, upon the entrance of Isabella 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 197 

of Bavaria, there was exhibited at the gate of the Painters, a 
representation of heaven, with numerous and brilliant stars ; the 
Almighty sitting on his throne in Majesty, with his Son and the 
Holy Spirit, surrounded by innumerable angels. The queen 
passed under the gate of paradise, from which descended two 
angels, who presented to her a costly crown, chanting at the 
same time this verse — 

" Dame enclose entre fleurs de lys, 
Reine etes vous de Paradis, 
De Erance et de tout le pays, 
Nous retournons en Paradis." 

Louis XL, on his state entrance, was greeted with a different 
sight. He was welcomed at the fountain Ponceau by three 
beautiful girls, entirely naked, in the attitude of sirens. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE ORNAMENTAL VS. THE USEFUL. 

Frenchmen claim for the Place de la Concorde the enviable 
distinction of being the most beautiful public square in the world. 
The view from the foot of the obelisk of Luxor, justifies their 
pretensions. On the Eastern side are the attractive gardens of 
the Tuileries, extending to the palace ; on the west, the more 
rural Champs Elysees, and the noblest of avenues, reaching to 
the Arch of Triumph, which is shortly to be crowned with a 
colossal chariot and four steeds in honor of Napoleon. The 
Madeleine and the beautiful palaces of the ministers, form its 
northern boundaries, and on the south, separated from it by the 
Seine, with its magnificent quays and graceful bridges, are the 
Hotel d'Orsay, the Palais Bourbon, and the new Palace of the 
Minister of Foreign Affairs; the "tout ensemble" forming an 
unrivalled " coup d'oeil" of architectural beauty. On a clear 
night, with the stars overhead, and the innumerable lights be- 
neath, extending in long vistas on all sides, the effect is magical. 

My object in alluding to this square is not to attempt to de- 
scribe it, but to call attention to the extraordinary efforts made 
by the government to render Paris as distinguished for its archi- 
tecture as for its museums. As the capital of civilization, the 
aim is to make it worthy of its title in point of embellishment. 
In this respect all governments concur, and none have made 
more lavish expenditure than those which have emanated more 
directly from the people. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 199 



I will name some of the more recent expenses to show at 
what cost this policy is pursaed by a government already in debt 
$1,083,500,000, on which they pay an annual interest of 
$67,000,000 : 

The Hotel de Ville, palace of the city government, has 

cost 88,000,000 

The Triumphal Arch of the Champs Elysees 2,086,400 

" " " Place Carrousel 280,000 

The labor on the Column Vendome — Russia and Austria 

contributed the bronze at the battle of Austerlitz. . 300,000 

Embellishments of the Place de la Concorde 300,000 

" " and Improvements in progress of the 

Place Carrousel (estimated) 2,000,000 

Alterations and Improvements of the Palace of Justice. 2,000,000 

Palace d'Orsay 2,270,000 

Hotel of Minister of Foreign Affairs (incomplete) 2,500,000 

Central Market and Improvements — government esti- 
mate to cost 4,000,000 

To connect the Tuileries with the Louvre, ordered by 

Louis Napoleon ; to cost 5,134,000 

Repairs of the Abbey St. Denis — unfinished 3,600,000 

Spent on the Palace and Museum of Versailles, by Louis 

Philippe 5,000,000 

Decorations of the Louvre — (of this $215,000 were spent 

in the ornaments of one hall) 400,000 

Column of July 240,000 

Total $38,1 10,400 

Napoleon during his reign expended $27,000,000 in embel- 
lishing Paris. 

The expenditure of sums like the above for objects chiefly 
decorative, in one city, by a government so largely in debt, 
clearly demonstrates that the gratification of taste is more consid- 
ered than either mere utility or economy. This species of dis- 
bursement belongs rather to royalty than republicanism. The 
former has nurtured in the people a love of display, which the 
latter is compelled to gratify. 



200 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



Paris expended nearly $100,000 on every republican May fete ; 
or nearly half as much on a day's amusement as on her primary 
schools for a year ; while four theatres actually receive an equal 
sum. 

The annual cost of the Legion of Honor, which gives 50,000 
individuals the privilege of wearing publicly red ribbons in their 
button-holes, is $1,600,000. The yearly cost of the Paris Pre- 
fecture of Police is $1,680,000. Upward of $11,000,000 are 
disbursed every year in pensions. The yearly expenses of the 
Army and Navy are nearly $100,000,000 ; for public buildings, 
&c., $15,000,000, and for public instruction for the 18,000,000 
youth of France, $3,400,000. Louis Napoleon, since he has as- 
sumed the supreme power, has increased the expenses of the 
army, public buildings, and his own disbursements as Chief of 
the State, upward of $7,000,000, while the budget for public 
instruction has been decreased nearly 2,000,000 of francs. He 
has appropriated 50,000 francs for the purchase of busts of him- 
self These sums show the relative importance of the objects in 
the eyes of the government. . No expense is spared in the educa- 
tion of a soldier in the art of war. The present army of France 
is probably the most efficient in the world. This army is, how- 
ever, considered more necessary as a protection to the govern- 
ment against its own citizens than against foreign powers. It 
affords the conclusive evidence, that the people of France who 
are not the friends of a monarchy, are ranged under the banner 
of revolution. This will ever be the case where authority relies 
upon force to control, rather than education to enlighten ig- 
norance. 

Another fact speaks volumes. The entire number of the youth 
of France receiving education in 1850, above that of elementary 
knowledge, was but a fraction over 92,000, while 394 prisons 
contained 66,000 prisoners, or one three-hundreth part of the 
adult population. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 201 

No government can be really republican that sanctions ex- 
penditures so inconsistent with democratic economy. "Where the 
people control their own expenses, they keep constantly in view, 
tliat every disbursement calls for a proportionate contribution 
from their pockets. Hence utility, and not display, becomes 
their standard. The people of the United States are lavish in 
support of education, because it is the basis of their republic. 
In France, the government are equally lavish for the army, be- 
cause upon it depends their existence. 

Another point in which there is an equal difference between 
the fundamental principles of the two nations, is the substitution 
of the ornamental for the useful. The lust of the eye is of para- 
mount consideration to the comfort of the body. This is mani- 
fested by all classes of society, from the domestic who spends a 
third of her earnings in caps and ribbons, to the princely propri- 
etors of hotels, who decorate a single saloon at the expense of 
$200,000. A Frenchman dines upon two francs that he may 
spend eight at the theatre. He lives in a garret that he may be 
a dandy in the street. He gilds his apartments and furniture to 
such an extent, that he appears literally to occupy a golden pa- 
lace ; yet, in many items of actual convenience, he is content to 
be far in the rear of ordinary households in America. He is as 
much inferior in the useful and unpretending mechanical arts of 
the United States, as he is in advance in all that appertains to 
ornament. In most French houses one seeks in tam for the con- 
veniences of bathing-rooms, good closets, ample kitchens, econo- 
mical fire-places, nice fitting doors, or easy and ingenious locks 
and door handles. In lieu of these we find numberless looking- 
glasses, clocks, bronzes, candelabras, furniture dore, and sump- 
tuous curtains. This species of extravagance has become a gen- 
eral tax upon the community. It enters into the price of all 
articles consumed. Many of the shops so greatly admired are 
decorated at an expense of upward of $60,000 each. Nothing 



202 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

can exceed the taste and neatness displayed in the arrattgement 
and packages of all descriptions of merchandise. The shop win- 
dows divide with the galleries of the Louvre the public admira- 
tion. Even in wood-yards the fuel is piled so as to form a spe- 
cies of mosaic work. A turkey which in the market can be 
bought for two dollars, by the time it has passed through the 
epicurean hands of a Palais Royal restaurateur, and attained the 
honor of a place among the costly delicacies of his window, 
mounts to the price of twenty-four dollars, and, for American 
appetite, is actually a much less desirable morsel than in its 
original state. 

Fruits are now 300 to 500 per cent dearer than in 1800. 
Fish have acquired a three-fold value. Coal the same. Rents 
have nearly doubled, and general expenses have increased fifty 
per cent. The present government has given a fresh impetus to 
this extravagance, by the re-establishment of titles, and the re- 
vival of the etiquette of the Imperial court, with its costly decor- 
ations and profuse salaries. The attendant expenses undoubt- 
edly contribute to the prosperity of certain branches of trade ; 
$10,000 are sometimes expended in Paris on flowers alone, on 
the occasion of a fete ; but it is the people at large on whom the 
burden of the governmental prodigality falls. 

The average annual expenditure of each inhabitant of Paris 
some years since, and which probably has not varied much since, 
was about $204, of which the chief items were — 



Rent $18 

Wine and brandy 18 

Food 49 

Clothing 9 

Charities 2:25 

Amusements 2 

Newspapers 50 

Taxes 26 : 50 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 203 

At the present time the cost of the following articles in Paris 
is as follows. Tea per lb. $1,25. Coffee 48 cents — sugar 17 
cents. Milk per quart, 6 cents. Eggs per dozen, 24 cents. 
Common meat by law 14 cents. Good beef 30 cents per pound 
and upward. Wood per cord, $10. Bad coal per ton, $8 to 10. 
The best claret, $17 per dozen. Champagne $6 to $15. 

At these prices it is evident that the laboring class, whose aver- 
age of wages is not sixty cents per day, fare very differently from 
artisans in the United States, to whom each one of these articles, 
excepting wines, is considered as an absolute necessary of life. 

Salt until recently paid to the State annually from five to ten 
millions of dollars. The land taxes fall more heavily upon the 
peasantry than upon the rich proprietors. Sugars are taxed 
$14,500,000, and the duties levied on articles of necessity con- 
sumed in Paris, in addition to the State taxation, amount to 
$6,500,000 per annum. Doors and windows pay $625,000, 
city tax. 

Paris proper has a population of more than a million souls 
including sixty-thousand strangers. Of these, 160,000 are 
either rich or earn more than sufficient for their wants. 800,000 
are in an unsatisfactory or wretched condition. 150,000 are con- 
stantly in the hospitals or receiving charity from other sources. 
Each of the above 800,000 is supported by benevolence on an 
average two years out of thirty-five, their average existence. 
There is one indigent person to every 12| inhabitants. There 
are 64,816 master workmen, and 342,530 work people, includ- 
ing 240,000 men, 112,000 women, and 26,530 children. The 
average wages of the men 75 cents a day ; of the women 33 
cents. There are 80,000 domestics, who average less than 
20 cents. The worst paid workmen are the cotton-spinners, who 
gain only from 20 to 40 cents a day. Women, often not over 
15 cents. The daily cost of food to journeymen is from 20 to 30 
cents, and of lodging, from $1 to $1 : 25 per month. 



204 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FEENCH PRINCIPLES. 

The lodgings of the poorest class are of the most wretched 
description. The proprietor frequently provides nothing but 
straw or rags for beds, and no other furniture. The chambers 
are unventilated, uncleaned, and crowded with the miserable 
and depraved of both sexes, who pay as dearly for these filthy 
lodgings as for those with some pretensions to comfort. Those 
V\^ho pay from five to eight francs per month are entitled to a 
dish of soup each evening, and to have a shirt washed once a 
week. 

The figures of the saving's banks show that one workman out 
of five deposits something each year, and of domestics one in two. 
Sums as small as a franc are received. 

In all France there are 4,500,000 paupers, and four million 
bordering upon this condition. 

For some years past the elements of a statistical account of 
pauperism and public charitable establishments have been col- 
lecting at the offices of the department of the Interior, under 
the direction of an inspector general. There exist 1133 ad- 
ministrations of hospitals and benevolent institutions established 
in 1130 communes. The departments which have the greatest 
number are the Vaucluse, Yar, Haut-E-hin, Nord, Seine-et-Oise, 
and Bouches-du-Rhone ; those which have the fewest are the 
Seine, the Hautes-Alpes, Corsica, the Hautes-Pyrenees, the Haute- 
Saone, and the Tarn. The department of the Seine has only 
two hospital administrations, but one of them — that of Paris — 
is so considerable from the immense revenues at its disposal, by 
the number of establishments which it directs, and by the num- 
ber of poor which it assists, that it reckons for a fifth part of the 
hospital assistance given in the whole of France. From 1800 
to 1845 the amount of donations and legacies officially made to 
the poor was not less than 122 millions, exclusive of sums given 
direct and authorized by the prefects. The venal value of the 
productive estates of the hospitals and almshouses is estimated 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 205 

at five hundred millions. They have also large revenues de- 
rived from other sources, such as the duty on the receipts of the 
theatres, grants from the communes, &c. The most considera- 
ble revenues of the hospital administrations are those of Paris, 
which are about 12,690,823f ; of Lyons, 2,279, 990f; of Rouen, 
l,13G,908f ; and of Marseilles, l,069,257f The food of the 
poor stands for a sum of 22,191,141f , of which the charge for 
wheat or bread is nearly one half The number of beds in the 
hospitals and almshouses in France is 126,142, of which there 
are 15,353 in the department of the Seine. The number of 
patients in the hospitals in 1847 was 486,083, and in the alms- 
houses 77,053. 

In 1848 the destitution of a portion of the working classes in 
Paris M^as so great that having sold all their clothing for bread, 
they were obliged to lie a-bed during the day, or borrow from 
some less unfortunate the necessary clothes to go into the streets 
to seek employment. 

There exists all over France, under the direction of the govern* 
ment, to the number of forty-five, five of which lend gratuitously, 
the useful establishments of Monts de Piete, institutions where 
the poor and needy can pawn their eflects on certain fixed rates 
of interest, and at fairly apprized values. Their establishment, 
like that of so many hospitals, is a striking evidence of the ne- 
cessitous condition of the poorer classes. During periods of great 
public misery they return, free of interest, all articles pledged not 
exceeding, say, ten francs value, consisting of indispensable tools, 
furniture, clothing, &c. In 1847 the Mont de Piete received 
3,400,087 articles valued at nearly $10,000,000, Paris alone 
doing more than half the business. One half the loans are for 
sums varying from twenty cents to one dollar. 

I have collected these data from official reports. I leave to 
the political economists to solve the connection between the de- 
plorable condition of the lower classes and the profuse expendi- 



206 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

ture and heavy taxes of the government. My readers will, I am 
sure, agree with me, that it is not from such materials, and 
from such a policy of government, that republicanism can germ- 
inate. Yet 7,500,000 voters have sanctioned the return to the 
extravagance of Imperial rule, after having witnessed, in 1850, 
under a nominal republic, a saving of $35,500,000, when com- 
pared with the disbursement of the last year of the reign of Louis 
Philippe. The people feel their burdens, but are still blind both 
to the true causes and remedy. On the ground of their pernicious 
influence, Louis Napoleon has suppressed the chairs of Political 
Economy in the colleges of France. The only doctrine now 
allowed to come before the people, is, that the luxury of the rich, 
and the expenditure of the government, are essential sources of 
welfare to the nation at large. When it can be shown that fast 
living benefits the constitution of the individual, or that public 
extravagance is of more value to a nation than private economy, 
then, but not till then, will the virtue of the present financial 
policy of France be discovered. Unhappily, there is an agent far 
more direct and active in the degradation of the nation than either 
taxation or extravagance. No one who has made a tour of 
curiosity around the "octroi " wall of Paris can have failed to make 
the discovery. Here, for at least three days in the week, he will 
find from 20,000 to 30,000 of the most dissolute of both sexes 
occupied in drinking and debauchery of the worst kind in tem- 
porary liquor shops. 

The increase of licensed retailers of wines and spirits through- 
out France has been rapid since 1830. Then, there existed but 
250,000. Now there are upward of 350,000, an increase of 
100,000 in twenty years, and of 20,000 during the last three 
years, under the Republic. This augmentation has been among 
the lowest class of cabarets, of which there has been an increase 
of 70,000 within nineteen years, paying a license of only six francs 
each. Were Beelzebub permitted to select an agent for the 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 207 

demoralization of humanity, he could not find one better adapted 
to his purpose than that which is sanctioned by the govenmrient 
of France. That I may not be accused of exaggerating the evil 
influence of the licensed dram-shops, I quote the following from 
the work of M. Villerme, upon the physical and moral condition 
of the working classes. The description he gives refers to the cab- 
arets of the quarter Etaques at Lille : 

" I could have wished," says Villerme, "to have entered the 
places, where I have seen through the doors and windows, across 
a cloud of tobacco smoke, crowds of people, agitated like the in- 
habitants of an ant-hill ; but it was evident that notwithstanding 
the precaution I had taken to disguise myself in a manner not to 
create suspicion, my appearance among them would have created 
surprise if not violence. A great number stood, from want of 
room to sit down. All drank the detestable corn brandy or beer. 
I heard even children utter the vilest obscenities. I can affirm, 
that I have never seen at once so much pollution, misery, and 
vice, and nowhere under an aspect more hideous and revolting " 

Li Paris it is estimated there are 17,000 habitual drunkards, 
of the most brutal character. The mayor of Paimpol, in his 
official report, says : " I affirm that the greater part of the paupers 
of this toAvn owe their misery to the excess of drinks, particularly 
brandy ; that almost all the disorders and crimes which have 
come before me, have been committed by persons either drunk or 
given to intoxication." 

Such evidences should destroy the common delusion, that, be- 
cause light wines are cheap in France, intoxication is rare. 
Brandies of the most deleterious nature are equally cheap, and 
more generally used. 

The government actually encourages the consumption of ardent 
spirits by public lectures. M. Payen, member of the Academy 
of Sciences, in his fifth lecture on Public Health, says : " Brandy 
in itself constitutes a beverage, either very dangerous or very 



208 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

beneficial. Alcohol, taken pure, is a violent poison ; mixed, on 
the contrary, with water, it is an extremely healthful drink." 
("Une boisson extremement salubre.") 

In the department of the North there are nearly 18,000 dram- 
shops, averaging one to every sixty-four inhabitants. So says 
the " Constitutionnel" of the 10th of May ult. 

There are some facts relative to French productive industry 
not without interest. The manufactures of Paris of all kinds 
produce yearly merchandise to the value of $268,000,000. Of 
the minor articles, which find their way to every quarter of the 
globe, we find the amounts as follow : Infants' toys, $800,000 ; 
buttons, $1,200,000 ; canes and whips, $600,000 ; fans, 
$600,000 ; artificial flowers, $2,200,000 ; gloves, $2,800,000 ; 
umbrellas, $1,400,000 ; perfumery, $2,000,000 ; pianos, 
$2,200,000 ; memorandum-books, $1,200,000 ; corsets (of which 
1,200,000 are annually exported), $3,000,000 ; baby, table, and 
toilet linen, to the fineness of which the French ladies attach 
even more importance than to the quality of their silks and satins, 
$5,400,000. 



CHAPTER XL 

EDUCATION SOCIALISM. 

I BROUGHT my children with me to Paris under the belief that 
I should find for them superior advantages of education to what 
exist in the United States. As I shared this opinion with many- 
others, it may not be amiss to give the results of my experience, 
for the consideration of those who desire to educate American 
youth in France. 

Having a son and daughter I was prompted to examine into 
the system pursued toward both sexes. Of the seclusion and 
restraint, and the effects of sexual isolation I have already 
spoken. 

For a girl, the choice was only between an entirely home 
education or boarding schools of the most exclusive kind. The 
former is the course in general pursued by the best families. It 
renders education much more expensive than in the United 
States. But by it the evils attending the latter are avoided. 

Boys are sent to boarding schools or the seminaries under the 
supervision of government, where the discipline is rigid and the 
exclusion of external influences as complete as stone walls and 
watchful guardians can render it. Teachers sleep with them, 
watch them at table, are with them during their play hours, 
and they are never allowed to leave the walls of their seminaries 
without their presence ; in short, they make themselves the 
pupils' shadows. The rule is never to leave them alone on any 
occasion, and the strictest watch is held over the servants and 



210 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

porters lest they should connive at procuring forbidden indul- 
gences from outside the walls. If the tutors were of irreproach- 
able morals this system would work better than it does ; but 
when it is considered that frequently in what is called a fashion- 
able school, they receive salaries of not over $100 per annum, no 
very lofty qualifications of either character or attainments should 
be expected. They are as likely to be the accomplices as the 
preventives of the pupils in their attempts at mischief or de- 
pravity. It is no uncommon event to find that those youths who 
have been most zealously watched, even in the least exception- 
able of these establishments, have acquired sufficient address to 
convince their anxious parents that they are as innocent of even 
the knowledge of evil as babes, while they are in reality adepts 
not only in theory but practice of what their mothers least wish 
them to know. The American system undoubtedly allows too 
much latitude to youth, particularly in not subjecting them to 
wholesome discipline, but it preserves them from systematic 
hypocrisy and fixed habits of falsehood. 

If education were simply the acquisition of general knowledge, 
the sciences, classics, or accomplishments, the American parent 
would find the institutions of France unexcelled by those of any 
other country. In the solid and ornamental branches they fur- 
nish for both sexes every desirable advantage. Intellectual 
knowledge is, however, but one part of education. Without 
principle it becomes the worst foe of society ; with principle, its 
best ally. I do not mean to be understood as implying that the 
morals are neglected. On the contrary, they are rigidly cared 
for after the French standard. But this in my judgment is one 
cause of the unfitness of the nation for the republicanism of the 
school of "Washington. After an attentive examination into their 
system of education for youth, I ami decidedly of the opinion that 
if American parents wish to rear a generation of American chil- 
dren, they by far had better intrust them, both for their morals, 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 211 

and the principles which are to be their guides in civil life, to 
the public schools of their own country, rather than to the high- 
est seminaries of France. I have seen the results of this nurture 
in too lamentable shapes to come to any other conclusion than, 
that, while it rarely is calculated to make an American success- 
ful abroad, it is quite sure to destroy his capacity for patriot- 
ism at home. Dissatisfied with the genius of his native country 
as being adverse to his acquired taste, he finds himself, as it 
were, expatriated, without the solace of being nationalized else- 
where. American citizens can best be reared amid American 
institutions. 

Corporeal punishment being entirely done away with, French 
teachers are as much at a loss for a substitute to preserve disci- 
pline as are our worthy reformists in the navy. They resort to 
a multitude of penances, the most efficacious of which is perhaps 
imprisonment ; but their general aim is to create shame or mor- 
tification. They seek to arouse emulation by a graduated system 
of rewards, which results in the early development of a passion 
for prizes and decorations. This is pushed to such an extent 
that the bauble often becomes the substitute for the principle, 
and the vanity of display takes the place of love of knowl- 
edge. These " rewards of merit" are coveted with an eagerness 
by all classes that to their graver neighbors savors of child- 
ishness. Hence, through every department of society, they are 
distributed with a profusion that elsewhere would destroy their 
value. 

Boys who are not yet emancipated from frocks are to be seen 
with decorations attached to their breasts, treading in the foot- 
steps of the legiondaries of Honor, whose ribbons, crosses, and 
grand crosses are to be met at every step in the street. The 
acquisition of a ribbon or a medal would be a penance to a 
Frenchman if he could not display it. If this innocent vanity 
be a spur to worthy actions, it is undoubtedly to be cherished in 



212 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

default of a better motive. The Legion of Honor already num- 
bers upward of 50,000 members, and scarcely a day passes with- 
out additions to its ranks. A recent calculation gives a decora- 
tion to one individual in every ten in France. 

The history of French Exhibitions of Manufactures and Arts 
shows to what a ridiculous extent the distribution of prizes is 
pursued. Indeed, they are so general, that merit becomes equal- 
ized, and in the end they will be of no more value as an evidence 
of truth than the certificate of a seller of pills. The ratio of in- 
crease has been rapid. In 1798 of the one hundred and ten ex- 
hibitions in the Champ de Mars only twenty-three, or a little 
more than a fifth, had prizes. In 1801 there was distributed 
one prize to every three exhibitors. The succeeding year it 
rose to one to every two. In 1823 the proportions were two 
prizes to every three persons. Each succeeding exhibition fol- 
lowed the same policy, until the prizes have nearly caught up 
with the exhibitors, the last on record being 3253 prizes to 3960 
exhibitors. Much complaint ensued at the awards of the com- 
missioners of the London Exhibition in 1851, although France 
received sixty recompenses for every one hundred exhibitors, 
while England was only in the ratio of twenty-nine to every one 
hundred, and all other nations but eighteen. 

Such is the effect of substituting in infancy the desire of arti- 
ficial distinctions, for the more solid principle of action from the 
simple sense of duty. It was with difficulty I could prevent one 
of the most simple-hearted and. conscientious of professors from 
bribing my children to learn their lessons. The perpetual argu- 
ment is, " Do this, and you shall have that." 

The vanity of display in dress is one of the earliest lessons 
taught the infant. The Tuileries' garden, of a fair day, resem- 
bles a bed of tulips. The children appear as if dressed for fash- 
ion plates to a milliner's window. The really good taste dis- 
played by their mothers in themselves, may spring from this 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 213 

early education ; but when it exalts attitudes and frocks above 
the more important training of the heart, it becomes a bad school 
for any child. 

That vanity becomes the ruling passion of the young girls is 
readily seen, from the enthusiastic admiration with which they 
greet any novel or striking toilet of their companions, and the 
importance which they are taught to attach to the rules of fash- 
ion. Their indulgences are all of a nature to foster this evil. 
They are made up and trained as " show" children, or as toys ; 
the praises they receive being bestowed upon their looks rather 
than their conduct ; which, however, in the rules of politeness, 
is in general unexceptionable. 

There are public fancy balls every winter for children, at- 
tended by all classes. The most select of these is that of the 
" Jardin d'Hiver," which takes place just before Lent. On this 
occasion, that beautiful and spacious winter garden is crowded to 
excess. No expense is spared in making the fete rival the adult 
balls. The toilets and costumes are as elaborate, varied, and 
costly, as parental indulgence and means can create. The chil- 
dren mingle in the dance with all the " abandon," and more 
than half of the coquetry of older heads. I have seen urchins 
that could just totter about, dressed in full fancy suits of pink 
trousers and jackets, cap and feathers ; and little girls, mere 
babies, for they were carried in arms, with their hair powdered, 
their arms and necks loaded with valuable jewels, and their 
bodies displaying in miniature the court toilets of the time of 
Louis XIV. and his unworthy successor. Their elder brothers 
and sisters exhibited every fashion and costume of Europe, since 
the Middle Ages, and some that had no likeness to any thing, 
either in the past or present. It was a pretty and animated 
scene, but a deplorable stimulus to vanity and assurance. Each 
child of more than ordinary attractions, was overwhelmed by tlie 
public generally with compliments upon its beauty and charming 



214 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

attire, and taught to consider the eclat of its appearance as the 
most important triumph of its life. 

Some one, with more severity than truth, has said that all 
children are by nature liars. The teacher of one of the best con- 
ducted boarding-schools of Paris, who had several American chil- 
dren under his charge, remarked that they were the only boys in 
his establishment on whose word he could rely. Where appear- 
ances are the chief aim of life, there must exist a corresponding 
amount of deception. The material lie readily becomes the 
moral lie. Truth is not placed upon its right foundation in the 
young. How can it be when there is no reliance put in their 
good faith ? The education of the children prepares the way for 
those lies of convenience or etiquette so prevalent among the 
adults. 

The simple English yes, or no, has no weight in France. To 
induce belief, adjurations are added, or a sort of sliding scale of 
expressions, by which you are made to comprehend with what 
degree of certainty you may rely upon any promise or assertion. 
I shall never forget the expression of surprise with which a young 
American girl, to whom falsehood was an unknown tongue, ex- 
plained to me that her teacher required her to swear to keep a 
promise ; and on another occasion, with mingled indignation and 
astonishment, exclaiming, "my teacher tells lies." She had 
detected some of those petty larcenies of truth which here would 
not be called by so harsh a name. 

Children are no casuists. They should be taught, by precept 
and example, the plain rule, to tell the truth under all circum- 
stances, and leave the consequences to take care of themselves. 
The French habit arises not so much from evil design, as from a 
desire either to convey pleasure, or to avoid giving pain. A phy- 
sician deceives his patient to convey encouragement ; the trades- 
man promises, to secure patronage ; gallantry is proverbial for its 
falsehoods, and vanity must be fed upon lies. The domestic is 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PRINCIPLES. 215 



more ingenious in evasions than a Cretan ; and your friend will 
never be frank at the expense of wounding your " amour-propre." 
Suspicion is so disguised in the finesse of courtesy, that its sting 
is scarcely felt ; while deception treads so lightly as barely to 
leave a trail. Wherever manners and morals have their source 
in the head, and not in the heart, this condition of things will 
exist. Yet, it is impossible not to admire that exquisite tact, 
which, in seeking a favor, seemingly confers an obligation. Per- 
haps the most prolific source of falsehood arises from the wish, as 
they express it, " pour faire plaisir," to give pleasure. A lady of 
my acquaintance had an old domestic, in whom she placed great 
confidence. She gave him an order one day, and, some time 
after, asked him if he had attended to it. " Certainly, Madame ; 
it is arranged as you wished." She afterward discovered that 
he had not obeyed her, and asked him why he wished to deceive 
her, as he well knew she preferred always to know the truth. 
" Ah, Madame ; I told you so to give you pleasure — a little lie 
does no harm." 

In another respect have my opinions undergone a change since 
my arrival in France. A republican myself, I sympathized with 
all that bore the name. France, as a republic, was a country 
to be loved as well as admired. But further acquaintance has 
convinced me, that neither by genius, habits, nor education, are 
Frenchmen republicans. Fifteen centuries of absolutism are no 
preparative for republicanism ; and, were they to-morrow to be 
governed by the constitution of the United States, they would 
no more be republicans than would ducks be chickens, though 
hatched under a hen. 

Americans justly consider religion and education as the wells 
whence they draw their republicanism. But it is religion and 
education carried home to each individual. Not a pompous 
ceremonial, to dazzle the eyes of the multitude, while it leaves 
their hearts as cold as the marble altars it rears ; nor arts and 



216 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



sciences for the favored few ; but a vital principle, warming souls 
into action, and a system that carries the elements of knowl- 
edge to every fire-side. Exile from the United States the clergy, 
blot out our common schools, and the next generation, ceas- 
ing to be republicans, would become anarchists. Give French- 
men the same education, not only of schools, but of the ballot- 
box, and the popular forms of government, from village select- 
men up to legislative assemblies, and you prepare them for re- 
publicanism ; but, until a people have learned to govern them- 
selves, they must be governed. 

I have no need to recal the past, to prove that free principles 
have never been firmly rooted in France. There have been con- 
tinual struggles against oppression, and repeated contests for 
power. Whichever gained the prize, prince or people, ruled with 
the authority of a despot or the cruelty of a tyrant. Terrorism 
has ever been the favorite weapon, because existence was only 
insured by success. Those who gave no quarter, could expect 
none ; and, thus, though there has been blood enough spilt in 
France to regenerate a world, it has enriched no soil but that of 
despotism. 

The Fronde gave the Parisians Louis XIV. for a master, who 
wrote to his loving subjects whenever it was necessary to elect a 

pre vest — " We desire that you give your votes to Monsieur ;" 

and the man of the court was elected. 

The revolution of 1789, in its general destruction, swept away 
a multitude of abuses. But the nation exchanged only one des- 
potism for a greater, and gladly welcomed imperial rule to screen 
them from their own. In 1848, they again essayed republican- 
ism ; were well nigh engulfed in anarchy, and now have sought 
safety and security in a dictator. 

When history has given so many proofs of the incapacity of a 
nation to be free, it is the part of wisdom, if she would remedy 
the evil, to investigate the causes. One of these I believe to be 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 217 

the Catholic rehgion ; which began by making the people bigots, 
and ended in leaving them infidels. In requiring implicit faith 
and obedience, it destroyed individual judgment and action. But 
the cause which at present prevents republicanism is ignorance : 
the actual ignorance of the masses, who, unable to read or reason for 
themselves, are alternately the tools of the demagogue and despot. 
Statistics will be found to sustain me in this opinion. The 
population of France is 36,000,000. In her primary schools she 
has 2,332,580 pupils, or the ratio of one-sixteenth of her popula- 
tion, supported at an annual expense of $1,800,000, or an aver- 
jtge to each pupil of about 75 cents. The State of New York, 
in r851, expended on 726,291 pupils in her common schools, 
$1,432,096, or an average of nearly $2 a-head for one-fourth of 
her population, while she has a fund of $6,612,850 devoted to 
purposes of education. The actual difference is, that while New 
York expends twice and two-thirds as much on each pupil as 
France, she educates her population also in the ratio of fourfold 
in point of numbers. France expends more upon the tomb of 
Napoleon than upon her entire " Ecoles Primaires;" and the city 
of Paris, from 1800 to 1845, has spent at the Hotel de Ville, in 
fetes to the several governments of France, $2,000,000 — a sum 
sufficient to support its common schools, at the present rate of 
appropriation, for fifteen years. Previous to 1830, the cost of 
primary instruction in Paris Avas but $16,000 annually. Since 
then it has been increased to $250,000, and the number of chil- 
dren frequenting the schools is about 45,000, or one twenty-second 
part of the population. In the colleges, institutions, and boarding- 
schools of the city, there are 11,000 pupils, but these embrace the 
elite of the youth from all parts of the country. The total num- 
ber of pupils in the lyceums, colleges, and private institutions in 
France, for 1850, was 92,231 ; making a total of 2,424,811 
children only, out of the 18,000,000 in France, receiving any 
degree of education. 

K 



218 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

The military conscription shows, that out of every thousand 
young men drawn, about 40 know how to read and write, 500 to 
read only, and more than 400 have no instruction whatever. 

Latterly the government has paid more attention to the estab- 
lishment of primary schools ; but I am assured that the people 
are not forward in educating their children. This arises, partly 
from suspicion of the motives of the government, and partly from 
necessity, which requires the incessant labor of all the members 
of a family to procure the means of subsistence. The great cry 
of the people is for work that will give them bread, and the ener- 
gies of the authorities are greatly directed toward providing them 
with labor. Luxury and extravagance are encouraged among 
the rich, that the poor may live. Public works are prosecuted, 
to prevent emeutes. The necessity for present relief is always so 
urgent, that permanent improvement advances but slowly. The 
government is ever in the position of a rider to a restless horse ; 
if he relax the rein for a second he is thrown. There can be no 
radical change in the character of the people until religion and 
education combine to teach them the duties they owe to God and 
man. While they remain half-starved, or fed like animals in a 
cage — their highest aim a full stomach — they will chafe and 
growl in their confinement. Louis XIV. expended $200,000,000 
on one palace. That money devoted to education would have 
kept Louis XVL on the throne, and advanced the civilization and 
freedom of Europe a century. Versailles is the wonder of art ; 
but France pays for it in the socialism of to-day. 

In the United States, where the nice adjustment of counter- 
balancing powers and general intelligence makes the political 
machine move on quietly in its accustomed track, no adequate 
conception can be formed of the evils to which France is exposed, 
from the passions and ignorance of its laboring masses, misled by 
unprincipled demagogues or conceited theorists. There is no 
spirit of conciliation in French politics. A difference of views is 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PRINCIPLES. 219 

a war to the knife. Falsehood, force, treachery, and every kindred 
weapon is employed to attain the desired end. The government 
strangles liberty, as it alleges, that society may exist. Inde- 
pendence of speech, action, or writing — every thing which gives po- 
litical importance to the individual — becomes a crime. The press, 
army, judiciary, and even the church, exist only as the slaves of 
authority. Spies are every where. The government spreads a 
thick web over France, ready, like a spider, to dart upon any in- 
truder upon the slightest movement. With this annihilation of 
political freedom, which in the United States would be the sig- 
nal of universal dissolution, she prospers — growing mightier and 
richer as liberty recedes. Call her by what name you will, the 
freedom of America becomes her curse, and the despotism of 
Russia her security. This being the case, she has no alternative 
but to maintain a strong government, until education and tran- 
quillity shall have prepared her citizens for the rational enjoy- 
ment of those privileges, which are the birthright alike of all men. 
It is not so much political as individual reform that France needs. 
I will show in few words what is this scourge that, upon every 
struggle for freedom, drives her back into despotism. It is soc'alism, 
directed by faction. Not that vain theory, which, if left to itself, 
would die from its own want of vitality ; but a wide-spread con- 
spiracy to undermine society and overturn authority, that atheism 
and brutality may renew their orgies of 1793. Like Catiline, it 
gathers under its banner the discontented and dissipated, of every 
opinion. It has its honest advocates, who seek only general good. 
So had the first revolution. They became its earliest victims. 
Finding its strongest support in ignorance, irritated to madness 
by social contrasts, it proclaims property and chastity to be crimes 
against nature. Barricades, assassination, and rapine, are its 
arguments. Its oracles are Robespierre, St. Just, and Ledru 
Rollin ; its code, the guillotine ; and its traditions, the massacres 
of September and the confiscations of the Assembly. 



220 PAEISIAN SIGHTS AND "FEENCH PRINCIPLES. 

It is worthy of remark, that it has been whenever there was 
most political freedom that France has incurred the greatest civil 
danger. The press and ballot-box, which in the United States 
are the guardians of freedom, become here the slaves of authority 
or the emissaries of disorder. The government emphatically per- 
petuates its own dangers by over-severity. It chains, but does 
not tame. It exasperates, but does not instruct. It rules by the 
sword alone, and perishes by the sword. If it were wise for its 
own good, or patriotic for the nation, instead of muzzling the 
press to arrest its licentiousness, it would use it to counteract the 
disorganizing doctrines of its adversaries. It should unfetter it 
entirely ; offset one doctrine by its opposite ; encourage discus- 
sion ; disseminate education ; imitate the organization of the 
socialist, by establishing every where associations for lawful, sal- 
utary objects ; feed the minds of the people as well as their 
bodies ; leave their tongues free, but direct their energies to use- 
ful ends. The government would then rest far more securely 
than it does at present on its army and police ; and the money 
which is now expended to sustain this terrorism, or to add to the 
embellishments of Paris, would yield a rich return of patriotism, 
by being expended in disseminating among its citizens those prin- 
ciples of law and order which are the only sure foundations foi 
the prosperity of a State. 

Socialism falls lifeless to the ground in the United States, be- 
cause it is met by a free press, a zealous clergy, and a matter-of- 
fact population, who, if they begin by shouting hosannahs for 
doctrines they do not comprehend, always end by a close investi- 
gation into their merits. Some practical good, or some recognized 
principle of humanity, must be adduced before they subscribe their 
time or money. If they are misled , a thousand presses proclaim 
it ; and, upon the great ocean of discussion, truth at last quietly 
floats. 

Not so in France. The government refuses to trust the people 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 221 



with the liberty of political orgiaiiizatiou and di.scussious. But, as 
they will speak and think, no other resource remains than secret 
societies, which being illegal, are so many nurseries of" political 
corruption, by being compelled to a system of fraud and treach- 
ery to maintain their existence. Thus organizations, which, if 
they were open and avowed, might be made serviceable to the 
cause of patriotism, or at all events, neutralized by those of 
opposite tendencies, become propagandas of disorganizing doc- 
trines, under the direction of master-spirits of intrigue and am- 
bition. 

In 1849, the Constituent Assembly interdicted clubs. They 
were replaced by the most formidable organization of secret 
societies with which the civil existence of a government has ever 
been threatened. An association entitled the " Solidarite repub- 
licaine" was formed, with the express design to propagate the 
doctrines of the democratic and social republic. Its centre was 
in Paris, with branches throughout the entire territory of France. 
Repeated judicial condemnations finally broke it up, but only to 
appear in other shapes; so that, during 1850 and 1851, France 
became covered with a frame- work of secret associations and their 
affiliations, to the number of several thousand, extending to the 
remotest hamlets. Many were disguised under the appearance 
of philanthropic institutions, literary circles, or musical reunions, 
with titles appropriate to their nominal functions. Others took 
the names of masonic lodges ; while not a few were christened 
with alarming or blasphemous appellations, such as the " Mal- 
contents," and the " Robe of Christ." 

The " Solidarite republicaine" had for its object to embrace 
France in one affiliation. After its ruin, two centres of action 
were established — one at Paris and the other at Lyons — distinct 
in action, but united by correspondence. That of Paris was di- 
rected by a superior committee, constituting " the revolutionary 
government of socialism." It was in direct correspondence with 



222 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

Lyons and the chief cities of France ; also with London, and all 
other foreign parts in which there existed kindred societies. 

There existed, in addition to the parent association, other cen- 
tres of action, known as " The Committee of Refugees ;" the 
secret society of " Union of the Communes," and the "Central 
Committee of Resistance," directed by two national representatives 
of the Mountain. The last circulated revolutionary bulletins, 
clandestinely printed. 

The Lyonese organization was less extensive than that of Paris, 
but stronger. The reports were more frequent, correspondence 
more active, and the unity of action better established. 

The means of communication was ordinarily by agents, who 
bore from one place to another the instructions of their chiefs. 
They assumed various disguises — generally that of workmen in 
search of occupation. Their credentials were the impressions of 
the seals of the leaders upon the papers transmitted, which were 
seldom signed. These seals represented the emblems of equality 
or terror, such as the Phrygian cap, the compass, or the lie- 
tor's ax. 

The societies recruited their ranks by the usual means of cor- 
ruption and stratagem. Before, however, admitting a novice, he 
was compelled to answer certain questions, and to undergo a 
particular ceremony, of which the following was the usual prac- 
tice : 

The candidate, blindfolded, knelt upon two knives crossed, and 
upon two five-franc pieces. He was then asked — 

" Do you wish to join this society ?" — " Yes." 

" Do you promise never to reveal its secrets ?" — " I promise it." 

" Swear to obey all orders which may be given you, even if 
they prescribe to you to kill your brother." — " I swear it." 

" What do you feel under your hands ?" — " I feel two kniver 
and two pieces of money." 

•' These objects are placed there to teach you that if the lust of 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 223 

money draws you to betray the society, you will be put to 
death." 

His eyes were then unbandaged, and two of the oldest brethren 
seized the knives and brandished them over his head, exclaiming-, 
" Yes, the brother who sells our secrets will deserve death, and 
we will kill him I" 

There is another form of initiation still more savage : " I swear 
upon these arms, symbols of honor, to serve the social and dem- 
ocratic republic, and to die for her, if it be necessary. I swear, 
besides, the deepest hatred to kings and royalists ; and that my 
bowels shall sooner become the food, of wild beasts, than that I 
shall ever fail to my oath. I swear it three times, in the name 
of my Saviour, Christ I 

" I swear upon my honor, in the name of the sacred cause into 
which I have been received, to march to any place with my broth- 
ers of the Mountain, to give aid and assistance to all democrats. 
I swear this three times, in the name of Christ, the Redeemer." 

He is then baptised " child of the Mountain ;" previous to which 
he must reply satisfactorily to these interrogatories : 

" Tell me, citizen, what motives have brought you here ? — 
Tell me, citizen, have you been denounced ; is it true ? — Now 
you have your eyes blinded, and your hands bound behind your 
back, we are your masters ; but we wish to examine you. If, 
by example, your brother or your father are not found on your 
side, will you avenge yourself; will you assassinate them ? — ^Will 
not that be painful to do ? — If it is necessary to take arms for the 
republic, will you take them ? — You wish then to become a repub- 
lican ? — Your life belongs to us." 

Members recognised each other by signs, the mode of saluta- 
tion, or by watchwords. For instance, on meeting, one asked, 
"L'heure?" the other replied, " Sonnee ;" the first exclaimed, 
*' Nouvclle I" to which the proper answer was " Montague." 

The societies every where prepared arms and munitions of war, 



224 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

and enrolled its members for the general insurrection ; the object 
of which is thus explained in an intercepted letter of one of the 
chiefs, proven before a judicial tribunal : 

" It is in 1852 that the combat should commence. Then we 
should vote with our constitution in hand ; organize for that ; not 
to force the gates of the college and then peaceably retire home, 
hut to march upon the chief place of the department, and pro- 
claim anew the revolution triumphant over its enemies." The 
rallying cry for this organized insurrection appears to have been 
" Marianne,'''' and " De boire a la sante de la Marianne,'' the 
substitute for " Reimblique democratique et wciale^ by which 
the brethren knew each other throughout France. 

The confidence inspired either by ignorance or a knowledge of 
their own strength, and faith in the ultimate success of the bloody 
drama they were preparing not only for France but for all Europe 
in 1852, prompted many individual acts of crime in the autumn 
of 1851. Their assassinations were chiefly confined to the gen- 
darmerie, a number of whom suffered from their assaults. They 
openly proclaimed their anticipated triumph in the following May, 
when the election of a new President was to be their signal foi 
rising. The numbers actually committed to measures of violence 
it is impossible to ascertain, but one successful movement would 
have agitated the entire country. The peaceful inhabitants were 
in a state of continual alarm ; they felt that they lived over a 
mine, ready at any moment to explode, and yet were ignorant of 
its extent. Often in sallying from their habitations in the morn- 
ing they would find threatening writings on the walls, calculated 
to inspire them with terror. Sheltered in the obscurity of the 
night, unknown voices would cry, "Long live the reds! death 
to the whites I" with maledictions upon the President and 
the aristocrats, coupled with praises of the guillotine. After 
the events of December, one of these instruments of decapita- 
tion was found actually prepared in the house of a mechanic, 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 225 

who asserted that he had made it on speculation, believing in a 
few months there would be a sudden demand lor the article. 
After this there is nothing to be said of the shipment of ready- 
made coffins to California. 

I give one of the many inscriptions with which socialism hast- 
ened to signalize its advent. It was taken from a wall in the 
Rue de Grenelle, and was an attempt at versification, in capital 
letters : 

" Malheureux ouvriers, sans pain et sans travaux, 
Vite, depechez vous, brulez les aristos, 
Puisqu'ils sont sans entrailles, montrons nous sans pitie, 
Et qu'ils expircnt tous sous leurs toits embrases." 

In plain and uncomfortable prose — 

" Wretched laborers, without bread and without work, quick, hasten and 
burn the aristocrats. Since they are without bowels, let us show ourselves 
without pity, that they may all expire together under their roofs." 

The following letter from a refugee at Geneva, addressed to 
one of his " freres" in France, residing at Montelimart, named 
Staupany, was found among the papers of the latter, on his being 
arrested for having taken part in the insurrection of December : 

" Dear Brother of the Union, Staupany — The day of vengeance is 
arrived ; I make it known to you in order that you may have arms and 
abundant ammunition in readiness ; fifty of us are about to leave Geneva, 
and we shall direct our course toward Montelimart. There are some be- 
longing to the Ardeche, the Drome, the Alps, and elsewhere ; we wish to 
massacre all the aristocrats and the black robes ; to burn all the chateaux ; 
no quarter, no pity for those wretches, and that monster Bonaparte — we 
must assassinate and poison them. Remember us to our brethren ; we 
shall write to you when we are nearer, in order that you may come and 
meet us, in order to avenge the blood which was shed in Ptome, and which 
is every day shed in France, by those wretches of soldiers, whom we will 
hunt down. It is now that we are going to enter on the great hunting 
match against all the kings of the earth ; the red flag must float on all 
sides, and the Phrygian cap before 1852. — Your brother of the Union for 
life, Peysson Antoin:^." 



226 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FEENCH PRINCIPLES. 



While preachers and practicers of such doctrines are about, 
society is in the condition of a man groping in the dark amid pit- 
falls, not knowing but the next step will plunge him to destruc- 
tion. This was the democracy of Marat faithfully transmitted to 
their children by the readers of the " Ami du Peuple." The same 
instruction is made the primary education of the infant race of 
socialists of 1851 . I translate from a journal, which pledges itself 
for their authenticity, two pertinent illustrations : 

" A child of six years, son of one of the insurgents of Surgy, 
awoke suddenly during the night of the fifth of December. 
' Papa,' cried he ; and hearing no answer, he called to his 
mother, and said, ' mamma, where then is my papa ? I will 
wait for him patiently, because he has gone with those others to 
kill the bourgeoisie (rich citizens)."^ 

The other is yet more atrocious : "A young woman of T air- 
nay, mother of a child of but eighteen months, was in the habit 
of asking him before a circle of Socialists, ' Tin I Tin I' (the child 
being named Mathurin), 'what is it they will do to the aristo- 
crats?' The infant immediately, to the infinite satisfaction of 
the spectators and the tender-hearted mother, who covered him 
with kisses, drew his hand rapidly across his neck, to indicate 
that it was thus they intended to cut their throats." 

The events of December 2d, which placed the supreme author- 
ity solely in the hands of Louis Napoleon, disconcerted the plans 
of the Socialists. Instead of a government weakened by its in- 
testine struggles, and a National Assembly m which they could 
count upon leaders and co-operators, they found themselves iso- 
lated from all extraneous aid, and an army of five hundred 
thousand men, under the direction of energetic and skillful 
chiefs, prepared to act against them. Even with these odds, 
they threw down the gauntlet, and unprepared as they were, 
took the field in detached parties all over the Republic . They 
were finally put down, but not until they had given a jjractical 



TARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PlUNCirLES. 227 

illustration of what would have been the character of their 
campaign in 1852, had not the President frustrated their inten- 
tions by seizing the supreme power himself. Their insignia 
were red caps and cravats. Their first acts were the pillage 
of the local treasuries, and whatever their wants dictated, burn- 
ing of public archives, registers, and title deeds of property, abuse 
of women, and the murder, and in some instances, torture of 
soldiers who fell into their hands. At Neury, the venerable 
cure was shot while in the act of addressing them ; and at 
Nissan, M. Bernard Maury was assassinated, the murderer 
exclaiming as he fired, " Here is a proprietor;" One of their 
own number met his death from wearing a dress-coat, by which 
he was mistaken for an aristocrat. Buildings were burned, 
property destroyed, and many lives lost on the part of the 
troops as well as the insurgents, in these detached struggles 
of communism for the mastery of France. 

The nobility and the clergy are not now the immediate 
objects of the hatred of the Socialists. These classes were tco 
effectually prostrated in 1793, ever to attain again a position 
which shall contrast so invidiously with that of the people, as 
did theirs previous to that revolution. A new class of society 
has arisen, possessing the wealth of France, and living in all 
the luxury and style of the old noblesse. It is thus of the rich 
" bourgeoisie," and it is against them, the men of property, the 
practical and striking examples of inequality, that the enmity 
of the modern revolutionists is directed. The alarm cry of the 
government is not now as then, " Preserve your privileges" — 
but, "Preserve your property." And its greatest strength is in 
the fear of the rich for their possessions. 

The intense hatred with which the Socialists and partisans of 
the government now regard each other, is often manifested in 
acts of treacherous violence on the one side, and questionable 
justice on the other. A soldier is attacked, as if he were a wild 



w 



228 PARISIAN SIGHTS AiND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

animal, on every favorable opportunity. On their side they are 
not slow to avenge the proffered insults and injuries. It is but 
a few days since, a sentinel on guard in the Rue Hichelieu, one 
of the most fashionable streets, being provoked by a party of 
Sociahsts, who threatened his life, fired upon them, and killed 
an innocent student, who, by a fatal coincidence, had just turned 
the corner in the direction of the shot. 

On the 20th of February, the Court of Assizes of Nevers, 
acquitted, almost with acclamations, a woman who had killed 
her husband, because he had joined the secret society, and 
sworn to forsake his wife and child, and all he held dearest, for 
the cause of the democratic and social republic. At the moment 
she gave the fatal blow, the deceased had said to her, in reply to 
her question, whether he had taken the customary oath : " Yes, 
I have sworn to abandon you and my child, at the first call. 
While I go to kill others, perhaps they will come here to kill 
you." 



CHAPTER XTL 



THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 



Between the crimes of socialism and the quiet of despotism, 
there can be but one choice. The nation at large may thrive 
under one master, but with a thousand it is rent asunder. The 
doctrines and deeds of the advocates of the social and democratic 
republic prove that those who have most to gain from political 




THE CHAMUER OK DEPUTIES. 



230 taiiisia:; sights a:\d fsench phinciples. 

reform are those who, in the name of liberty, are most prone to 
violate its sacred principles. Were, however, the ignorance and 
evil passions of the masses, the only obstacle to the progress of 
republicanism in France, much might be hoped for from the 
gradual dissemination of education and spread of democratic in- 
stitutions. But when we find that its greatest hindrance is in 
the legislative body elected by universal suffrage, the cause be- 
comes almost hopeless. 

The talent and education of the National Assembly, composed 
of nearly eight hundred members, were chiefly to be found among 
the Legitimists or partisans of the house of Orleans. However 
friendly Berryer, Montalembert, Larochejaquelin, Mole, or Thiers 
might be to civil liberty, they were pledged to it in no other form 
than that of royalty. It was for that they labored, and by that 
tenure they held their seats. They carried with them a large 
proportion of the intellect and wealth of France. Republican- 
ism in name existed rather by reason of the disagreement of the 
rival branches of royalty than by its own strength. Still it was 
respectably represented in the Assembly by about eighty-three 
members of the conservative order, of whom the most eminent 
names were Lamartine, the Generals Cavaignac, Lamoriciere, 
and the eloquent divine, M. Coquerel. The reds, or the Mount- 
ain, the ultra democrats, among whom every shade of opinion 
was to be found, from moderate republicanism to the worst errors 
of socialism, embraced nearly one third of the National Assem- 
bly, and numbered in their ranks Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue, the 
Abbe Lammenais, Emile Girardin, and others, whose literary 
talents have gained them reputation. A more heterogeneous 
body of legislators could not have been assembled. Members of 
the Bonaparte family were to be seen supporting all opinions 
except that of legitimacy, while there was a party of Imperial- 
ists who looked forward to the re-establishment of the empire as 
the national panacea. The National Assembly in lieu of being 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 231 

a body of republican legislators, M^as an assemblage of Imperial- 
ists, Bourbonists, Orleauists, and Socialists, with a moderate 
number of members who were sincere in their attachment to a 
republic. It was a legislature of partisans and not of patriots. 
Yet they were elected by the broadest principle of suffrage, and 
may be fairly supposed to represent the actual political condition 
of the people. If so, on the principle of numbers, it was evident 
that republicanism had no root in the nation. 

Admitting it was a republican assembly, has their conduct 
shown their sincerity or their fitness for republicanism ? They 
embraced the best minds of the nation, so that ignorance has no 
apology to offer ; and if they failed in their duties as republican 
legislators, it has been from incapacity or design. That they 
have failed, and incurred the opprobrium and contempt of the 
nation is evident from the fact that, while the usurpation of Louis 
Bonaparte was universally deplored or condemned, not one soli- 
tary voice of commiseration was raised for the Assembly. It 
had become the laughing stock, or object of the indignation of 
the community ; and they saw it fall to the ground, so far as the 
individual members were concerned, with as little concern as 
they Avould have shown for the dropping of rotten fruit in an 
orchard. Instead of laboring for the republic, in accordance 
with their oaths and duties, they had presented to the world the 
unseemly spectacle of fierce contentions, unprincipled intrigues, 
and a total disregard not only of forensic rules, but the ordinary 
forms of individual courtesy. In general, they were united in 
one point — hostility to the executive authority ; each party hoping 
that in its destruction their own might rise. It was a wild 
scramble for power, with " the devil take the hindmost" for its 
cry. My own country has a sufficient weight of disgrace, arising 
from the individual passions of its hot-brained and ignorant legis- 
lators, to deplore ; but it has been true to the principles of legisla- 
tive action. The National Assembly of France has to chnr?-e 



232 PARISLiN SIGHTS AND FP.ENCH PRINCIPLES. 

itself with doing more in one session to discredit republicanism 
in the eyes of Europe, than could have the combined efforts of 
all its enemies in a century. 

If it were not for the importance of the results to humanity, I 
should be disposed to place the proceedings of the IsTational As- 
sembly, during their last ephemeral career, among the amuse- 
ments of this capital. As a republican, I feel too deep a regret 
at this last sad solution of the problem of a liberal form of gov- 
ernment in France, to speak of its faults and overthrow, otherwise 
than in sorrow. Making every allowance for the greater vivacity 
and excitability of Gallic eloquence, and of habits foreign to our 
own, what a spectacle of tumult and confusion has the Assembly 
presented up to the period of it forcible dissolution on the 2d of 
December ! Louis Napoleon saved himself from arrest and im- 
prisonment by forestalling the contemplated violence of the legis- 
lative power. I scarcely know what day's proceedings to select, 
to give my readers a picture of these scandalous scenes, as taken 
down by their own reporters. Those who have never been in 
the midst of the hurly-burly of half a thousand French throats, 
each speaking in its loudest key, and no ears listening, can form 
but an imperfect idea of this specimen of democratic legislation. 
It became an established principle with the reds to prevent, by 
their noise and disorder, any speaker from being heard, that they 
opposed. This conduct is the m.ore surprising when contrasted 
with the admirable order sustained by the authority of the police 
in all public places, and that system of regularity and economy 
of time and labor introduced into other matters of business. 

I shall quote from several days' proceedings. It would be 
supposed that national dignity, as well as common politeness, 
would induce a legislative body to receive the reading of the 
annual report of the Chief Magistrate in respectful silence. The 
'•President's Message" was read November 4th. I give one 
paragraph only, with the reported interruptions : 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 233 



" That biU will, therefore, contain nothing calculated to shock 
the Assembly ; for, if I at present ask to have the law of May 
31st withdrawn, I do not mean to deny the approbation which 
I formerly gave to the initiative of that Ministry who asked the 
majority to support the law which it presented. (Murmurs on 
the Left, and laughter). I admit even that its effects have 
been to a certain extent salutary. (Renewed laughter). In 
calling to mind the circumstance under which it was presented, 
it must be allowed that it was a political act more than an 
electoral law — (marks of denial, accompanied with laughter) — 
that it was a real measure of public safety. (Sneers on the 
Left). And whenever the Assembly proposes to me vigorous 
measures to save the country, it may count on my disinterested 
and firm co-operation. (Ironical laughter). But measures of 
public safety are only passed for a limited time." (Interruption 
on the Left). 

From the sitting of November 11th : 

The Minister of the Interior. — I have to. state that I 
have not in any manner endeavored to avoid replying to the 
interpellations which have been just brought forward. M. Leon 
Faucher, my predecessor, has a dossier of papers on this subject. 
(Loud interruptions ; exclamations on both sides of the Chamber). 
That honorable gentleman, I say, has in his possession the dos- 
sier of papers which did not pass from my hands into his. (Re- 
newed interruption). 

M. Leon Faucher endeavored to speak from his place, but 
was prevented by the exclamations of the Left. He at last sat 
down. 

The Minister of the Interior. — I make that statement 
because I do not wish it to be imagined that the members of the 
present Government have need to entrench themselves behind 
any one ; their own acts will speak for them. But you have 



234 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



just heard a report read from the Procureur of the Republie, 
which shows clearly that all the parties concerned in M. Sar- 
tin's affair, had matters to reproach themselves with. (Load 
exclamations). 

A Voice. — He is seeking votes for the new electoral law I 
(Great noise on the Hight, responded to by ironical laughter 
on the Left). 

The President. — Allow the Minister to proceed. No one 
ever attempts to prevent a Minister from replying to interpella- 
tions ; let him then go on whether ill or well. (Tremendous 
uproar, which continued for some time). 

M. DE Thorigny turned round, and bowed to the President, 
speaking to him at the same time with animation. 

Voices on the Left. — You are insulting the Minister ! 

The President. — Do not attach to my words a meaning 
which they are not intended to convey. I merely desired to 
impress on you the propriety of allowing the honorable Minister 
to reply, whether his sentiments were pleasing to you or not. 
(Laughter; agitation). 

From the sitting of November I7th : 

General Bedeau (from his place). — Before the vote takes 
place, I wish to ask the Government one question. Is the 
decree of May 11, approved of by the ministry of which M. 0. 
Barrot was the head, and posted up in the barracks by General 
Rulhieres, then the Minister of War, still to be found in the bar- 
racks, or rather has it not been withdrawn ? (Marks of the 
liveliest curiosity). 

The Minister of War (from his place). — The decree which 
had been posted up in some few barracks, still was to be found 
in a small number, when I arrived at power. I was applied to, 
to declare whether I intended to leave it there ; and, as doubts 
and hesitations have been manifested, I gave orders to have it 



PAKISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 235 

withdrawn. (Extraordinary agitation on every side, and partic- 
ularly on the Left. We have seldom seen a legislative assembly 
more moved by the simple statement of a fact.) 

M. Baze, M. Cremieux, and some other members, rushed to 
the tribune, successively entered it, and then abruptly descended. 
The agitation on the Left was most remarkable, groups being 
formed among the members as they stood up in their places, dis- 
puting, to all appearance, together most warmly. MM. Latrade, 
Schcelcher, and Charras, seemed to be addressing their colleagues. 
The last-named gentleman, as we caught his words amid the 
noise, asked how the Left could now vote with the Government. 
M. Schoelcher replied that he could never consent to give such 
an arm to the majority as the affirmative vote of the proposition. 
M. V. Hugo was seen standing on his seat, gesticulating most 
energetically. The scene of confusion was most extraordinary. 

M. DE GiRARDiN Suddenly rushed up the steps of the tribune, 
but was received with laughter. He then descended, and after 
a time, again appeared ; but was again badly received. After 
endeavoring in vain to obtain a hearing, he finally disappeared. 

The sitting was again suspended, and with difficulty the Pres- 
ident's bell at last procured a comparative state of silence. 

General d'Hautpoul. — I by no means, in ascending the trib- 
une, have any intention to deny the rights of the Assembly to 
provide for its defense by every means which it may deem neces- 
sary. But allow me to ask you two questions ; the first is this : 
Is there any imminent danger? No, the most complete calm 
exists every where except here. (Cries of order, order I) 
A Voice. — But he speaks the truth I (Laughter.) 
General Husson. — The exact truth ! (Continued laughter.) 
On the Left. — Suppress the state of siege, then I (Noise.) 
General d'Hautpoul. — The next question is this : Is this 
proposition necessary? For my part, I find in the Constitution as 
many and sufficient guaranties els can be reasonably demanded. 



236 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

Allow me to consider the question under a military point of 
view. (Loud marks of impatience.) When the Assembly 
should desire a battalion, a regiment, a brigade, or a division, 
it must apply to the questors to demand them. (Loud explosion 
of impatience, by which the speaker's voice was rendered quite 
inaudible.) 

Voices on the Left. — Speak to us of the reviews of Satory. 

General d'Hautpoul attempted to continue his remarks, but 
the noise was so great as to prevent his words from reaching the 
reporter's gallery. He at last quitted the tribune. 

General Lebreton ascended the tribune, but could not 
either obtain a hearing. (Cries of divide, divide !) 

M. TmERS. — For the first time the new chief of the public 
force. General Leroy Saint Arnaud, has made an appeal in novel 
terms to passive obedience and to discipline. I do not attribute 
it as a crime to the minister to make this appeal to discipline ; 
but he perverts the spirit of the army when he does not speak to 
it of respect for the laws — 

A Voice. — Is not the Constitution then a law ? 

M. Thiers. — And for the Constitution. 

A Voice. — You violated the Constitution by voting the law 
of May 31. 

On the E-ight. — You violated it on the 13th June. (Noise.) 

A Voice. — And you voted against it. (Continued noise.) 

On the Right. — Allow the Montagnards to speak ; they are 
our future senators. (Laughter.) 

M. Thiers. — I will ask my interrupters whether they approve 
of the omission of any mention of respect for the laws in the cir- 
cular in question. 

M. JoLY. — That question is not fairly put. (" Hear I hear I" 
on the Left.) 

General de Lamoriciere. — Monsieur le President, pray pre- 
vent these interruptions. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 237 

M. JoLY. — We are treated as if we were children. (Noise.) 

The President (pointing to the Mountain.) — There are a 
izen there who have a mania for interruptions. 
M. Thiers. — The circular of the minister, I repeat, is of great 
avity. Is it so or not ? Do you approve of it ? (Cries of 
No, no," on the Left, and laughter on the right.) 
M. Michel (de Bourges.) — A snare is laid for us. 
On the E-ight. — Citizen Michel has, it appears, the privilege 

interrupting. 

M. Thiers. — Under no re^-zwic can such language be held to 
e army. The army is abroad the defender of the nationality 
-at home, the defender of the law. That must be well under- 
ood by all, and without any reticence. In imposing on the 
•my the absolute principle, without any reserve, of obedience, 
)u should give it for object the maintenance of the law. And 
)u, legislators, who wish that the obedience of the soldier shall 
a.ve the maintenance of the law for its object, should render the 
.w clear. What is the object of the proposition? I am not the 
nthor of it, neither did I suggest it. (Ironical laughter on the 
eft.) 

A Voice on the Left. — And the law of the 31st May I 

General Leflo (addressing the Left.) — No one more than 
ou inspired the proposition I 

M. Thiers. — Under a constitution which renders the Assem- 
ly the temporary holder of the national sovereignty, the neces- 
iry principle inspired by the simplest common sense is, that the 
.ssembly shall charge itself with its defense, and shall not dele- 
ate it to any one. Now, do you think that that general decla- 
ition, without any rule which explains it, is sufficiently clear 
D put an end to all the anxieties of those who may have to 
omply with your requisitions ? (Interruptions on the Left.) 

A Voice on the Right. — Silence, Messieurs les Senateurs. 
A laugh.) 



238 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

M. Thiers. — Two cases may present themselves. (K-enewed 
interruption.) 

A Voice on the Right. — The speakers of the minority have 
more hberty than those of the majority. 

M. Thiers (addressing the Left.) — "What! you now deny the 
privilege of direct requisition, which you admitted under the 
Constituent Assembly ? 

On the Left. — Certainly. 

A Voice on the Hight. — Wait a moment. You are not 
ministers yet. (Laughter; agitation on the Left.) 

The President. — It is impossible to preach passive obedience 
with greater want of discipline. (Laughter.) M. Valentin, you 
always interrupt ; and yet you will again maintain that you 
have said nothing. 

M. Valentin protested amid the noise. 

The President. — I call you to order, since you are anxious 
to be distinguished. 

M. Thiers. — The principle of direct requisition has been 
affirmed. But it has been denied, and you think that that does 
not require a new reply from the government. 

General Lebreton. — It has been denied by all governments. 
(" Order I" on the Left.) I will say the same thing in the trib- 
une. (" Order, order I") 

The President. — I call you to order. 

General Lebreton spoke with great warmth. 

The President. — I call you to order, with inscription on the 
minutes. 

M. Thiers. — Will you grant me a few minutes to explain the 
principle of direct requisition ? Do you wish that this immense 
question, misunderstood now, shall not be unknown to-morrow ? 
The question at stake is the independence of the Assembly — the 
future of representative government — the last Assembly, perhaps. 
(" Oh ! oh I" on the Left.) 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 239 

On the Left. — It will be the last for you and for the royalists. 

M. Thiers. — Royalist I Call me royalist if you will I But 
it will be a singular spectacle to see royalists defending the lib- 
erty of the Assembly. (Cries of divide I on the Left). I wish 
to make the question clear in the interest of every body. (Noise 
on the Left.) 

M. Grew and M. Pelletier (to the Left.) — Let him speak, 
then I 

M. Thiers. — The country will know that when I wished to 
throw light on this great question, you would not listen to me. 
(The honorable gentleman left the tribune.) 

These scandalous scenes were not always the result of political 
animosities. That of the 21st of November, both from the sub- 
ject and the mode of handling it, was one of the most ludicrous 
that ever took place within legislative halls. It is impossible to 
render justice to it in English, or to convey the spirit of the 
" doubles entendres ;" still, as it is a subject of interest to the 
advocates of " female rights," I shall give an imperfect specimen 
of its spirit : 

The President calls M. Leroux to the tribune to explain an 
amendment which he proposed yesterday. (Shouts of laughter.) 
M. Leroux ascends the tribune amid noise and laughter. 

The amendment was to add all Frenchwomen, of age, to the 
list of electors. He proceeded with his speech in support of his 
amendment, amid boisterous laughter from all parts of the As- 
sembly, who seemed to view his argument as a capital joke. 
After some remarks of an amusing character, uttered with all the 
zeal and gravity of the rider of a new hobby, he proceeds : 

Well, I ask of you liberty, equality, and fraternity. (Laughter.) 

A Voice. — And maternity. (Greater laughter.) 

M. Leroux. — I ask you if these great words do not apply to 



240 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

all human creatures. The authors of the constitution did not 
wish to exclude wonien ; for they understood very well that the 
union of the two sexes — (laughter). 

A YoicE TO THE Left. — Leave the tribune ; you see that you 
make fun for these gentlemen. 

M. Leroux. — The people, gentlemen, the people do not un- 
derstand the fundamental difference between man and woman. 
(Roars of laughter). Gentlemen, pursued the orator, let me 
quote from Condorcet. Are not women, equally with men, part 
of nature. Do you argue from the physical weakness of woman 
— then it would be necessary to have the representatives exam- 
ined by a medical jury. (Boisterous laughter.) 

Several Voices. — Enough, enough. 

A Voice to the Left of the Speaker. — You see that they 
are only mocking you. 

M. Leroux. — Do you argue upon the inferiority of mind of 
woman. It seems to me that there are here some representa- 
tives who have less. (Renewed laughter ; shouts of enough — 
enough.) I see no motive to prevent females from performing 
public functions. As to the rest, I quote the sublime words of 
Olymphe of Gouges : woman has the right to ascend the tribune, 
since she has the right to mount the scaffold. (Noise.) 

General Husson. — Has she also the right to be drawn in the 
conscription. (Merriment.) 

M. Leroux. — Gentlemen, I defend a cause eminently just. 
Do not condemn a cause because it is badly defended. (Hear, 
hear.) I examine now the question in view of the actual politi- 
cal situation of France. (General signs of impatience.) For 
some time, great efforts have been made to destroy centralization, 
and create a good commuijal organization. And I also, I wish 
a good communal organisation ; but I believe, that without fe- 
males, this organisation would be entirely unfruitful. (The most 
lively laughter.) 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 241 

Numerous Voices. — Enough, enough. 

M. Leroux. — To arrive at a good communal organization, it 
is necessary to call science to your aid ; and, if you will permit 
me — but you will not permit me — (laughter.) 

Several Voices. — Go on, go on. 

M. Leroux. — If you will permit me, I will show you how to 
make the organisation of the future. (Hear, hear.) I speak, but 
you do not listen. 

The President. — Never has an orator been listened to with 
more patience. 

The orator proceeded, in much the same vein, amid indescrib- 
able confusion, to defend the ptopriety of allowing females to 
vote ; at times wandering from his subject, and recalled by 
shouts of " stick to the women." 

M. Leroux. — If there be a means to make a powerful move- 
ment in favor of the public peace ; if there be a means to recon- 
cile and conciliate men among themselves, it is to bring between 
— (laughter, and the noisiest interruption.) 

To THE Right. — Enough, enough. Mr. President, we have 
no time to lose. 

M. Leroux, making a powerful effort to be heard above the 
tumult, recalled a conversation that he had had with Saint Si- 
mon, who had forewarned him of the contagious success of the 
socialist ideas. — It is thus, continued he, that when the grippe 
shows itself in a locality, every body coughs. (Laughter.) Al- 
ready, you see, my lord the Archbishop of Paris has the "grippe." 
(Laughter.) Soon you will all have it. (Renewed laughter.) 
The orator left the tribune ; and his amendment, not being sup- 
ported, was not put to vote. 

In this manner women's rights were put to the right-about, 
among the gallant French legislators. 

At the risk of too many plums to my pudding, I give an ex- 

L 



242 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

tract from the report of the memorable sitting of the 22d of 
November. 

The President of the Assembly. — There remains only one 
additional proposition, which has been made by General Gram- 
mont, in these terms : 

During the fortnight which shall follow the elections, the jus- 
tice of the peace shall pronounce, for the benefit of the com- 
munes, a fine of from five to fifteen francs, upon each elector, 
who, not having voted, cannot furnish legal proof of his inability 
to do so. The list of names of the electors who have incurred 
this fine, shall remain posted up, during a month, in each com- 
mune. 

Many Voices. — General Grammont is absent. Take the 
vote, take the vote. 

This proposition is put to vote amid great confusion. 

M. DE Vatimesnil demands to speak before the counter vote 
is taken. 

M. Charras. — You can not speak. The vote is begun — let it 
be finished. 

The President calls to order. 

Loud disputation between M. Charras and several members of 
the committee. 

M. 0. Barrot demands the floor, for an appeal to the rule ; 
and mounts the tribune. (Loud protestations from the left.) 

A Voice from the Left. — The rule does not permit speaking 
between the two votes. Mr. President, cause the rule to be ob- 
served. 

The President. — It is precisely for an appeal to the rule, that 
M. Barrot demands the floor. 

The extreme Left. — Let him wait until after the vote ! the 
rule is strict. 

The President. — Since you invoke the rules of the assem- 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 243 

bly, let me at least explain what they are ! (The clamor re- 
commences on the benches of the first section of the extreme 
left.) 

M. 0. Barrot. — It is precisely upon this regulation that I wish 
to speak. 

The extreme Left. — You have not the right. 

M. Cholat. — Mr. President, will you preserve order ? — The 
rule is intended for all. 

M. 0. Barrot. — I demand of M. the President, who alone is 
charged with maintaining order — (Violent interruption on the 
extreme left.) I beg, Mr. President, to — (New interruption from 
the same part.) 

The President. — You speak of the rule, and having violated 
it, you wish to direct according to your own will the deliberation. 
You do not even allow the President the right of applying or 
interpreting the very rule you invoke. It is constantly the same 
thing — always tyranny that you wish to exercise in the name of 
liberty. (Exclamations become more and more overpowering 
from the extreme left.) 

M. Cholat, who is seated on the left, calls out in a great pas- 
sion — Mr. President ! 

The President (turning toward the interrupter.) — I call you 
to order. 

M. Cholat insists with great violence. 

The President. — Monsieur, by what right do you speak, when 
I have not given you the floor? I call you to order a second 
time, and order it to be inserted in the journal. 

The Left. — The vote was begun — nobody can speak between 
the two votes — respect the rules of the Assembly. 

The President. — But, Messieurs, you violate it incessantly by 
your clamors. Now, as always, you disturb the sitting — you 
throw continually disorder into the deliberations. 

The Left. — Read the rule — read the rule. 



244 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

The President reads the rule. 

The Left. — Ah ! 

The President. — How ; you exclaim " Ah !" Without doubt 
no speaking is allowed between the two votes. But what con- 
stitutes a vote ? Those who are for, and those who oppose a 
proposition. It is only after the nays are taken that it is decided. 
(Ironical applause from the left.) 

A Voice from the Left. — Bravo, Escobar, bravo ! (Rumors 
from the right.) 

M. 0. Barrot leaves the tribune. 

The noise and tumult re-commence on the benches of the 
Mountain. 

The President impatiently throws down on his desk the rule 
which he held in his hand. 

They begin again to laugh on the benches of the Mountain, 

The Right. — It is scandalous — it is the greatest impropriety. 

The President. — I am indignant at the insupportable tyranny 
of the members who only interfere in the debates to disturb them, 
and to impose upon their colleagues their will by violence. — 
(Noisy interruptions from the left.) A certain number of you 
unite to interrupt simultaneously, and render all deliberation im- 
possible. The President is not free, the majority is not free, the 
tribune is not free — and thanks to you for it all. You bring 
nothing but violence and clamor to our deliberations. 

M. DE Vatimesnil rises, and tries to make known the opinion 
of the committee on the amendment of General Grammont. The 
noise entirely drowns his words. 

The Left. — You can't speak now, the vote is begun ! 

The Right. — No, no, there is no vote yet ! 

M. Charras. — Mr. President, keep order ; make them observe 
the rule — nobody can speak between the two votes. 

The Right. — There is no vote yet : it was to explain the vote 
that M. Barrot demanded the floor. 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 245 

The Left. — The Assembly can see how the President main- 
tains order and observes the regulations. 

The President. — Oh, be quiet ! Yes, the Assembly sees all, and 
will do me justice. (Numerous cries of adhesion to the President.) 

The Left. — The vote had begun — 

The President. — There has been no vote. The committee 
declares there was a misunderstanding. The vote was not ex- 
plained, and it has not taken place. Be that as it may, the ballot 
has been called for again on the amendment of General Gram- 
mont ; it is about to take place. 

M. Cholat mounts the tribune. — Citizens (says he), I have 
been called to order because I appealed to the rule of the House. 

The Right. — By-and-by, by-and-by ; after the sitting. 

M. Cholat. — I have been called to order, because I said that 
it was forbidden to speak between the two votes. I protest 
against this call to order. 

The Right. — Call him to order, call him to order. 

The President. — The member in the tribune, whose name I 
don't know — 

Many Voices.— M. Cholat. 

The President. — M. Cholat interprets the regulation as he 
chooses. I called him to order, because he disturbed the House. 
He insists that the rule forbids speaking between the two votes ; 
but I repeat again, that what is called a vote and counter-vote, 
does not make two votes — that it only makes a vote. (Laughing 
on the extreme left.) No ; I repeat it again, there has been no 
vote. But the ballot has been called for instead of the usual vote. 
It is going to take place now. 

M. DE Vatimesnil. — Mr. President, if there has not been a vote, 
then I demand the floor. 

The Left. — No ! no ! adjourn — adjourn ! 

The President. — You demand to adjourn — I will consult the 
Assembly. 



246 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

A very large majority pronounce against adjournment. 

The President. — The adjournment is not carried. (Exclama- 
tions from the left.) The Chairman of the Committee has the 
floor. 

M. DE Vatimesnil mounts the tribune again. 

The cries on the left re-commence with more violence than 
ever. Many Montagnards add to the noise by knocking on their 
desks with their paper knives. The orator makes vain efforts to 
be heard. 

The Extreme Left. — Call the votes I call the votes I 

M. DE Yatimesnil, with impatience. — I will be as obstinate as 
you ! I will not quit the tribune until I have used my right of 
speaking here. 

The Extreme Left. — You have no right to speak. You violate 
the rules ! The vote ! The vote I 

M. DE Vatimesnil. — The Assembly has decided that the dis- 
cussion is not closed. You revolt against the decision of the As- 
sembly. (The tumult continually increases on the extreme left.) 

A Voice. — This is delightful. 

Other Voices. — It is shameful. 

M. DE Vatimesnil makes new efforts to be heard. Most of his 
words are lost in the confusion. — ^We do not reject entirely (said 
he) the aniendment of General Grammont ; we only request him 
to withdraw it provisionally, to be brought up again after the 
third reading. 

A Voice. — M. de Grammont was not there. 

M. DE Vatimesnil. — And the Committee will examine the 
amendment between now and the third reading. 

Voice at the Extreme Left. — Another trick ; always sly. 
(Murmurs on the right.) 

The President — turning toward the extreme left. — You offer, 
Messieurs, a fine spectacle to the nation I 

The Extreme Left — So do you — so do you I 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FEENCH PUINCIPLES. 247 

The President. — Oh ! as for me, I am above board, and do 
not fear the judgment of the people. (Ironical laughter from the 
benches of the Mountain.) As the demand for the ballot is not 
persisted in, I consult the Assembly by requesting them to rise, 
on the amendment of General Grammont. 

The vote is taken. Twenty members only rise for — a strong 
majority against. The Montagnards take no part in the vote. 

The President. — The amendment is rejected. (Ironical ap- 
plause from the left.) 



CHAPTER XIIL 

There were two ingredients of Yankee life that I decidedly 
missed in Paris. The first was ice, for which " de I'eau frappee" 
was but a poor substitute. The second, the enlivening bustle 
of a fire, with the hubbub of bells, the clatter of the engines, and 
the shouts of the boys. There are fires here, but one rarely hears 
of them, even through the papers. In the absence of loaded 
trucks and the din of mercantile business, the noise of Paris 
becomes monotonous. But once in seven months did I hear the 
shrill jingle of a dray load of iron ; it was true home music. 
The excitement of a fire, I frequently thought would be a pleas- 
ing relief 

However, I had not lived long in Paris before I found it pos- 
sessed advantages in the way of excitement peculiar to itself, 
amply compensating for its disadvantages in the above mentioned 
respects. 

It was the 2d of December, of the past year. I had arisen at 
my usual hour, breakfasted, read Galignani, and the Constitu- 
tionnel, my morning papers, without finding an item of interest, 
and as the morning was sombre, had prepared myself for a day 
of more than ordinary quiet. Toward one o'clock, a French 
lady dropped in. She was somewhat excited, and I inquired the 
reason. " "What," said she, " have you not heard the news ? 
There is a revolution. Paris is in a state of siege. The troops 
are all in the streets — the National Assembly is dissolved — most 
of the members are imprisoned — the railroad tracks are torn up 
to prevent the provinces from marching upon the city — Louis 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 249 

Napoleon is Emperor ;" and thus she rattled off a volley of 
news, that was genuine news indeed. 

I immediately went out. The good citizens of Paris, who 
had gone to bed under a republic, were just leaving their break- 
fast tables to read the proclamations which announced to them 
it had suddenly departed this life, forgetting to add, however, 
leaving a numerous and afflicted family. Those who had most 
at stake in this violent change, knew nothing of it until it had 
been old news by some hours in London. 

I passed along the boulevards and the usual resorts of business. 
All the shops were closed. Groups read in silence the notices, 
and quietly dispersed. This part of the city, usually so rife with 
life, appeared as if stunned by a violent blow. Men held their 
breaths. It was not the settled composure with which the seaman 
looks upon the coming storm, but the anxiety and terror with 
which is awaited an expected earthquake. 

The public gardens and Palais Royal were closed. There 
was no thought of amusement. The Champs Elysees, Place 
Madeleine, and every avenue leading to the Palais Bourbon and 
residence of Louis !Napoleon, were filled with dense masses of 
troops in fighting order. More than fifty thousand were under 
arms. They, too, were awaiting, they knew not what — but 
ready at the order of their chiefs to rise and slay. Certain streets 
were closed ; those who had homes therein, found no little diffi- 
culty in reaching them. 

That evening the celebrated Jesuist, Le Ventura, was to preach 
at Notre Dame. I started early to obtain admission, as he al- 
ways draws a multitude. By this time, six o'clock, the troops 
had returned to their barracks, and Paris looked as gay and busy 
as on the preceding evening. The church was closed; nothing 
was permitted at this juncture that would attract the crowd to 
one spot. News boys were crying at every corner the dissolution 
of the National Assembly, and the other stringent measures of 



250 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

the President. The people had begun to discuss them ; the first 
sentiments were admiration at the cleverness with which it had 
been done. The President had conversed even till midnight in 
the most friendly manner at the Elysee with his opponents. No 
agitation announced the desperate throw he had then resolved 
to make of his political dice. Yet his head was upon the cast, 
and if successful he foresaw that blood was to be shed. In four 
hours the deed was done. Every printing press, not his own, 
seized. The Assembly dissolved. The legislative halls closed. 
Those in whose hands the grasp of his own was scarcely cold, 
arrested and in prison. Thiers wept, and was alternately fool 
and coward — Cavaignac, dignified — Changarnier haughty, and 
Lamoriciere, pugnacious. None whom Napoleon feared were 
spared. His selection was admirable. Not a leader of any 
party except his own was exempted from the call to exchange 
a warm bed at four o'clock of a winter's morning for a stone cell 
at Vincennes, or the prison Mazas. Each had the honor of a 
special attendance — no questions were answered as to the object 
of their imprisonment or their probable fate. In twelve hours 
the bourgeoisie exclaimed, " c'est bien fait !" and were ready to 
go on with their amusements. 

On the 3d there was more excitement. The secret societies 
were at work. The reds were recovering from their astonish- 
ment ; ex-members of the National Assembly harangued the 
multitude, and circulated addresses to arouse the people to resist- 
ance. The result was several barricades, which were speedily 
carried by the troops, with some loss on both sides. On the part 
of the government, the proclamations became more stringent. 
Carriages were forbidden to circulate, or the inhabitants to ap- 
pear in the streets. Those taken near any barricade with arms 
about them were to be put to death. 

In the evening there was shouting ; inflammatory speeches ; 
the rallying cries of parties. Immense human masses on the 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 251 

boulevards and the quays heaved to and fro in sullen anger, like 
the swell of the ocean before an approaching storm. Individuals 
ran from group to group muttering curses upon the usurper. 
Some said the excitement would spend itself in words ; others, 
that Louis Napoleon would be killed within forty-eight hours. 
The police charged repeatedly on the crowds, which, in return, 
mocked at them. I looked quietly on, and became convinced 
that the back of the Parisian tiger was up, and was preparing 
for a leap. 

The next morning was the fourth. There was not much stir- 
ring ; the shops were generally closed. I went to the Rue de 
Jeuneurs, where I had business. This was before mid-day. As 
I approached this street, I saw crowds running through it, panic 
struck, while the residents were barring their windows and 
closing their doors. I asked the cause. All were too much 
frightened to speak inteUigently. Some thought the faubourgs 
were rising, and others that the troops were approaching ; each 
added to the alarm of his neighbor. At last I learned that bar- 
ricades were being erected at the Porte St. Denis on the boule- 
vard of that name. 

Being curious to see a barricade, I pushed directly for the spot. 
On arrival, I found the work going bravely on. Four were al- 
ready commenced at different intervals in the boulevard. Stag- 
ings had been torn from unfinished houses ; iron railings from 
the magnificent gate-way ; trees were cut down ; all those name- 
less buildings, at once so convenient and so disgraceful, to this 
fashionable avenue, were demolished, and their materials added 
to the fortifications. Carts, carriages, and omnibuses were tri- 
umphantly dragged from hiding places, amid shouts of exultation, 
to add to the monster piles. The stout iron railing and massive 
gtone wall which protects the side walk from the street, long re- 
sisted the efforts of destruction. Crow-bars, and the united 
strength of several hundred men at last brought it down. Pave- 



252 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

ments were torn up, and shaped into breast-works. The barri- 
cades soon began to assume a formidable appearance, and to any 
force but artillery were well nigh impregnable. They were fur- 
ther strengthened by ropes, which bound firmly together the dis- 
jointed parts. There were not very many at work, but those 
who were, labored like beavers, and evidently knew their trade. 
Blouses and broadcloth were about equally mixed. Neither 
were there many spectators. All sorts of rumors were in circu- 
lation. The army, it was said, had left Paris, to defend the city 
against the troops coming in from the neighboring cities — such 
a regiment had revolted ; the National Guards were arming ; in 
short, every species of tale to encourage and exasperate the ene- 
mies of the President, was circulated by agents of the political 
parties of the late Assembly. 

Having completed the barricades, the mob burst into the near- 
est guard-house, with wild shouts, sacked it, placed its flag on 
their most formidable fortification, and used the materials to fur- 
ther strengthen their quarters. The small force usually there 
had been withdrawn or it would have been massacred. 

Sinister individuals in blouses armed with cutlasses, muskets, 
and pistols, began to appear. These acted as leaders. They 
broke into all the neighboring shops and searched the houses for 
arms. "When any were found, they marked in chalk on the 
building, "arms given; death to robbers." From one of the 
theatres they procured a few muskets and a drum. These were 
hailed with shouts of joy, and a party began beating the rappel 
through the adjacent streets. 

I was surprised to see how many boys there were in their 
ranks. They went to work in all these violences as if on a frolic, 
light-hearted, and even jovial. From their manner, I should 
rather have supposed that they were gathering materials for a 
rustic fair, than for a struggle in which no quarters would be 
given. I saddened to think how many that I saw so busy around 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 253 

me, would be shot or bayonetted before night. The comments 
of the spectators varied ; some said, let the rascals go ahead — 
they wish to plunder and kill — they will soon be taught a good 
lesson ; others encouraged. One man asked me if I were Ger- 
man or English ; on my replying that I was an American, 
" Ah I" said he, with a sigh, " you live in a true republic." 

I asked a fine looking boy of about fourteen, in a school uni- 
form, with a stick in his hand, at the end of which was a bayo- 
net, what he intended doing ; " you are too young to fight." 
He laughed, brandished his weapon, and ran off to join a crowd, 
listening to the reading of a proclamation announcing the deposi- 
tion of Louis Napoleon, and calling upon the Parisians to give 
their allegiance to the provisional government formed by such of 
the members of the late Assembly as had escaped arrest. 

A rough looking fellow, armed with a musket, who seemed to 
have authority, came up to me, and said, " If you are one of the 
curious, you had better be off," I thought so too, as appearances 
began to wear a serious aspect. The houses overlooking the 
barricades were taken possession of, and garrisoned ; sentinels were 
placed at the principal points ; the non-combatants were mostly 
gone, and few but fighters left. I had been there less than two 
hours ; yet, so rapidly had the mob worked, that all the streets 
opening upon this vicinity, were already fortified. I was forced 
to climb three barricades, politely assisted over one by an armed 
lad in a blouse, before getting clear of their line of operations. 
It was most injudiciously chosen, for it could be attacked to 
equal advantage in front and rear ; and their flanks were also 
exposed. 

I found the boulevards below almost deserted. A brigade of 
infantry and artillery were just turning the corner of the street, 
marching without music, slowly, toward the first barricade. Be- 
fore reaching it, they halted. One half the artillery passed in 
front, and was pointed toward the breastworks ; the other was 



254 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

loaded with grape, and pointed in the other direction. The few 
persons about saluted the troops with " Vive la Republique." 
The commanding officer ordered the boulevard to be cleared. 
The troops charged upon us, and we slipped out of the way by 
the side streets. 

I then walked down the Rue Montmartre, where I saw simi- 
lar scenes. Coming out again upon the Boulevard des Italiens, 
I found the entire length of the boulevard, from the spot I first 
left, filled with troops, in order of battle. The line extended 
into the Rue de la Paix. It was a stirring spectacle to witness 
regiment after regiment of artillery, cavalry, and infantry, pass 
up this noble avenue, to take their stations. In the novelty and 
beauty of their array, I quite lost sight of the fact that they were 
ordered out to slaughter these misguided people I had so recent- 
ly left. At one time they cleared the sidewalks, and allowed no 
one to approach their lines. The sentinels, however, for some 
inexplicable cause, were shortly removed ; and those of the pop- 
ulace who had more curiosity than fear, allowed to pass along 
as far as the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle. This led to the mel- 
ancholy slaughter of thirty-five individuals, and the wounding of 
a large number, soon after on the Boulevard Montmartre, just 
above where I was. Opposite me was the 7th Lancers ; a fine 
corps, recently arrived in Paris. 

I stood talking with a friend, when, from the upper end of 
the line, the discharge of cannon was heard, followed by a blaze 
of musketry and a general charge. The stragglers on the boule- 
vards took to flight in all directions. They pitched headlong 
into open doors, or loudly demanded entrance at the closed. I 
was fortunate enough to get into a neighboring carriage way, 
through the grated " porte cochere" of which I could see what 
was going on. The firing was tremendous. Volley followed 
volley so fast, that it seemed like one continued peal of thunder. 
Suddenly there was a louder and nearer crash ; the cavalry in 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 255 

front of me wavered ; and then, as if struck with panic, turned, 
and rushed in disorder down the street, making the ground trem- 
ble under their tread, "What could have occurred ! The first 
supposition was, that the different regiments had turned their 
arms upon each other. Another that the reds had proved too 
strong for the troops. In a few minutes the horsemen came 
charging back, firing their pistols on all sides. Then came in 
quick succession the orders " To shut all windows ; to keep out 
of sight ; to open the blinds, &c." It seemed an unexpected 
fire had been opened upon the soldiers, from some of the houses 
above, by which they at first suffered so severely as to cause a 
recoil. The roar of firearms was now tremendous. Mortars 
and cannon were directed point blank at the suspicious houses, 
within a few rods distance, and fired. They were then carried 
by assault. 

The rattle of small shot against windows and walls was inces- 
sant. This was too in the finest part of the boulevards Costly 
houses were completely riddled ; their fronts were knocked in ; 
balls passed through the various floors, and lodged finally where- 
ever their spent force destined them. The windows were de- 
stroyed by the concussion, of the cannon ; and, as for the outer 
walls, they looked as if a thunder-storm of bullets had passed 
over them. They were literally peppered with lead from cellar 
to roof Some balls had passed through panes of glass, leaving 
holes as true and clear of their exact size, as if they had been 
cut out by a diamond. Of the hair-breadth escapes of the in- 
mates, and the general destruction of property, I need not speak. 
The government afterward footed all the bills for the last. The 
firing continued for nearly an hour, and then receded to more 
distant parts of the city ; for the field of combat embraced an 
area of several miles, and there were some 40,000 troops en- 
gaged. 

As soon as I could with safety, I left my covert ; and, by back 



256 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

streets, endeavoured to get near enough to the barricades, to see 
what work had been done there. It was now quite dark. The 
troops guarded every possible avenue, and fired upon all who 
approached the interdicted spots. The streets in this vicinity- 
were almost wholly deserted. The few that were to be seen, 
cautiously peered round the corners, but did not venture to show 
themselves. Not knowing the danger, I attempted to go upon 
the boulevards by the Rue Montmartre. As I walked up the 
street I noticed the marks of the balls that had glanced along 
the houses. There was a large pool of blood, but the corpses 
had been removed. I had nearly reached the corner, when an 
officer rushed out, and ordered me back in a tone which I thought 
most prudent to obey. As I was alone, and he had probably 
seen enough blood-shed that afternoon, he did nothing worse. 1 
turned into the first cross street, and there saw a well dressed 
man, gasping on a rude bier. Those who had picked him up 
said he had six balls in him. In the Rue Richelieu, there was 
the corpse of a young girl. Some one had placed lighted can- 
dles at her head and feet. 

Emerging from the line of soldiers as 1 reached the parts of the 
city removed from their surveillance, I noticed a bitter feeling 
among the better classes for the day's work. The slaughter 
was, as it always is, in the heat of a battle, greatly exaggerated. 
Still it was with no gratifying emotions that one could reduce 
it, even to a few hundred. It was civil war — fratricide. I 
reached home indignant and mournful. 

The soldiers have been justly blamed for firing upon the un- 
armed. Those who fought at the barricades knew the penalty 
of defeat. The inhabitants had been ordered not to appear in 
the streets. Those who suffered, forgot the danger in their curi- 
osity. One gentleman met his death by standing at a distant 
corner and looking at the troops with a spy-glass. It was mis- 
taken for a musket, and he fell, pierced with several balls 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 257 

Those who were killed on the Boulevard Montmatre were 
non-combatants, but suffered from their rashness. The public 
feeling in such cases is ever severe on the soldier. But in ex- 
tenuation it should be remembered, that his exposed position in 
a street, fired upon from houses on both sides, is by no means 
calculated to insure coolness and judgment. His enemies are 
unseen, and he knows, from fatal experience, that a socialist 
gives no quarter. Several of his comrades had been basely as- 
sassinated in the public ways. Numbers had already fallen from 
the fire of his ambushed foes. In the heat of revenge he believes 
every citizen's coat to cover an assassin, and kills without pity. 

In the evening I again attempted to go up the boulevards. 
Squadrons of lancers were on guard, and brigades of infantry 
bivouacked on the side- walks. The public were permitted to go 
as far as the Rue Lafitte, but obliged to walk quickly, and not 
allowed to stop for an instant. Horsemen with loaded pistols 
stood at each corner, and if there was the slightest hesitation, 
or if two individuals spoke to each other, they pointed them 
directly upon the delinquents, and ordered them to pass on. 
The cavalry, with their lances in rest, charged repeatedly upon 
groups accidentally formed. In passing the length only of a 
square I was obliged to run twice ; and once had just time to 
dodge under the projecting angle of a house as the troops swept 
by. These charges were intended simply to intimidate and pre- 
vent collections of people. The French rule is to run at the 
sight of a soldier. There is more danger from the panic of the 
crowd than from the military. I concluded an accident was 
as liable to occur to me as any one else, and returned home, fully 
satisfied by what I had seen during the day, that street fighting 
in Paris is a serious matter. 

Louis Napoleon proclaimed himself master of France, Decem- 
ber 2d. The 4th of December made him master. It was a 
terrible lesson deliberately planned, and intended as such by him. 



258 PAUISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 

I say planned, for the Minister of War, in his official report, says, 
" The troops were withdrawn, and the insurgents allowed to 
build their barricades unmolested, that the insurrection might 
come to a head and be extinguished at one blow." It left me 
nothing to covet in the political institutions of France, but more 
to love in those of my own country. The poor wretches who 
suffered most were mere hirelings. A French gentleman of my 
acquaintance, whose house was near one of the barricades, said 
a few days afterward to the sentinel in front of his door, " The 
soldiers have behaved well." " Ah !" repUed the man, " it 
pleases you to say so, but my heart is heavy this morning." 
" Why so ?" "I was drawn with a number of my comrades to 
shoot thirty prisoners condemned to death. As they marched to 
the place of execution, they said to one another, it was hard to 
die for ten francs." 



CHAPTER XIV. 



LOUIS NAPOLEON. 



France still bears the name of a Republic. Her only claim 
to the title is universal suffrage. It is evident, however, that 
the government, by its secret machinery, is able to make even 
this nominal liberty subservient to its own objects. If it do 
not, it will be because Louis Napoleon possesses more public 
virtue than is in general attributed to him. 

The inhabitants of the United States naturally take a lively 
interest in the cause of political freedom and democratic institu- 
tions. The events of 1848 were hailed by them with joy, as 
indicating the progress of republican ideas. What has been the 
result ? In three years republicanism has become extinct in 
Europe, while monarchy has not only regained its lost ground, 
but almost annihilated every vestige of freedom. 

Why is this ? In the United States every movement of the 
people is an onward one. Religion, education, and liberal insti- 
tutions march together. In Europe, liberty burns for a while 
with a fierce, destructive flame — and then expires. It has no 
store of fuel. Take France, for example, which has oftenest 
tried her fortune under the republican banner. Her citizens are 
second in courage to none ; light, chivalric, and impetuous, their 
patriotism flashes brilliantly in wonderful efforts, but sinks under 
protracted and unostentatious labor. They are easily led by 
honor, but restless under restraint. The Due de Richelieu hap- 
pily illustrates this trait, in relating the effect of a speech of his 
to his troops, at the attack on Minorca. Great drunkenness and 
demoralization prevailed in his camp, and the officers counseled 



260 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FUENCH PRINCIPLES. 

severe measures to put an end to the scandal. He understood 
French nature better. Passing the army in review before him, 
he thus addressed them : " Soldiers I grenadiers ! I declare to 
you, that those who hereafter get drunk shall not have the 
honor to join in the assault I am about to make on the Fort St. 
Philippe." This put an end to the vice, and the fort, which 
was considered almost impregnable, was carried by their reck- 
less bravery. Richelieu adds, that if his troops had been En- 
glish, he should have flogged them. With this discipline and 
plenty of roast beef, he says, they fight well enough. An Anglo- 
American meets his warmest friend, gives a careless nod, and 
passes on. A Frenchman, on the contrary, rushes into his arms, 
and kisses both cheeks. Yet the coldness of the former covers 
more sincerity than the ardor of the latter. 

The discarded Bourbon cock is the most fitting type of the 
French character, in more respects than one. Like that bird, it 
can bear no rival. It is brave, quick, gallant, and showy : more 
fond of war than peace, and impatient of that beaver-like indus- 
try, by which alone a republic can flourish. 

Thus the elements of Gallic character are, in themselves, 
adverse to sober, calculating, persevering republicanism. To 
these are to be added the education and associations of fifteen 
centuries of monarchy or feudalism. Some of the most import- 
ant of civil rights have been acquired by the people, but they 
continue as unrepublican as ever. While the present system of 
education remains unchanged, this must be the fact. I have 
already given my reasons why I consider the Roman Catholic 
religion to be adverse to republicanism. Also, the centralism 
and emasculating policy of the government in its system of 
police and forcible constraint of individual enterprise ; still more 
in its preference of ornament to utility ; amusements to educa- 
tion ; but, above all, in the principles inculcated in the youth by 
the discipline to which they are subjected, which of themselves 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 261 

undermines the very base of individual reliance and integrity. I 
mean suspicion and deception. 

Republicanism being unsuited to the condition and genius of 
France, she has the alternative between a constitutional mon- 
archy, like that of England, or an absolutism, allied to that of 
Russia. She is as incapable of imitating England as she is the 
United States. Nor are the social and civil institutions of 
England adapted to her vi^ants. The loyalty that characterizes 
an Englishman, has no corresponding feature in a Frenchman. 
Neither has he that idolatry for rank which renders the former 
almost servile in his homage to his superiors. Thrones, titles, 
and castes have experienced too many fluctuations in France to be 
viewed with veneration. It is one of the most promising points 
of the national character, that the individual in France is gauged 
solely on his own merits. Nowhere is talent more honored and 
appreciated, or society more free from petty conventionalities. 

Legitimacy in France is an obsolete idea. The Bourbons have no 
leader to offer suited to the nation. The noblesse, who still cling 
to the fortunes of the Count of Chambord, worship a chimera. 
Theirs is like the age of gold ; it grows brighter in their imagina- 
tions as it recedes. It is the selfish ambition of a titled few, and 
can never again have weight with the nation. Louis Philippe was 
more wedded to his money-bags and family aggrandizement, than 
to the welfare of France. He attained the throne by meanness, and 
lost it by weakness. His ancestors were the curse of the country, 
and his children are no objects of its attachment. Their influence 
was solely through their wealth and those who, like Thiers, 
sought to elevate their own fortunes by the Orleans' name. 

There did exist, however, a man of the people — the roughest 
master they ever had. Him, they loved as they have loved no 
other sovereign. He stamped his name on their hearts by the 
deeds they esteem, by the works they admire ; and, deeper than 
all, by that Code which is his greenest laurel. The name of 



262 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FEENCH PRINCIPLES, 

Napoleon is the most popular one of France. It was his name 
alone that elected his nephew. 

Of the character of Louis Napoleon, the six millions of French- 
men who voted him the President of the Republic, knew no- 
thing. They cast the souvenirs of his uncle into the electoral 
urns. Three years have passed, and they have learned only 
that he is an unreadable man. Suddenly and without warning, 
he broke his solemn oath of office — overturned the constitution 
— drove the legislators of the people from their Hall of Assem- 
bly by the bayonet — imprisoned and exiled the best blood and 
talent of France — muzzled the press by a law severer than the 
ordinance which cost Charles X. his throne — shot his fellow- 
citizens by hundreds in the streets — rode rough-shod over all 
classes — grasping the entire liberties of his country — and yet the 
people confirmed his power, and his acts, by the largest vote 
ever bestowed upon a ruler. 

It was during the last election, that an aged Frenchman of 
the provinces came to deposit his vote. " For whom do you 
vote?" asked the officer at the polls. " For the Emperor Napo- 
leon." " But he has long been dead." " Then I vote for his son." 
" But he is dead also." " Very well ; the Holy Spirit must be 
left ; I vote for him." And he cast it for Louis Bonaparte. 

The mass sustain Louis Napoleon on account of his name. 
The men of property, because his popularity is the only counter- 
poise to the socialists. The legitimists and noblesse, that they 
may exist in peace. As one said to me, they must eat and drink. 
To all, he is the man of destiny. They have submitted to a greater 
tyranny than even the Emperor dared exercise ; not that they ac- 
cept this policy as their permanent rule — but that France, like the 
maniac in the straight-jacket, may gradually recover her senses, 
and learn to appreciate the blessings of rational freedom. 

No ruler ever outraged constitutional liberty in a more sum- 
mary way than Louis Napoleon. Paradoxical as it may appear, 



PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 263 

perhaps no one has at this moment greater strength in the coun- 
try at large. They trust him because they believe he has a 
mission to perform — that he will save France. He has it in his 
power to ruin or redeem her. If the selfish and vain glorious 
policy of his uncle is to be his guide, he has every thing to fear. 
If, on the contrary, he preserves a firm hand, relaxing, as time 
and discipline prepare the way for popular forms of government, 
devoting the resources entrusted to him to the moral improvement 
and education of the people, France may be at this moment 
nearer republicanism than she has ever yet been. 

However severely his government may press upon the citizens 
of France, the neutral stranger has no cause of complaint. No- 
where is he better protected or more hospitably received. He is 
required simply to abstain from intermeddling with public affairs. 
Nor is he allowed, as in the United States, to abuse his asylum 
by insulting the agents of friendly powers, or plotting against the 
stability of the government that protects him. He must, however, 
behave himself with the same propriety that is expected of a vis- 
itor in a family — that is, to let alone its domestic concerns. 

The hospitality of the United States is, as it should be, limit- 
less. It receives all who come into the privileges of its institu- 
tions, without question of birth, character, opinion, or fortune. 
To do this with impunity, there must be, however, a large store 
of domestic virtue. With the great, good, or unfortunate of 
Europe, come also her evil spirits, disorganizers, whose highest 
aim is revolution, that they may themselves be conspicuous. 
Availing themselves of the attachment of the citizens of the 
United States to those principles of freedom which are their 
political birth-right, they would enlist them in a crusade against 
all powers whose forms of government differ, whether those 
nations desire or are prepared or not to receive them. England 
intervened in the affairs of France. It cost her $2,300,000,000 
to send Napoleon to St. Helena. Repubhcan France endeavored 



264 PARISIAN SIGHTS AND FRENCH PRINCIPLES. 



to revolutionize Europe. Her lesson was learned when the 
Cossacks encamped in the Champs Ely sees. If the foreign dem- 
agogues who are now preaching hostility toward powers with 
which the United States are on terms of amity, should succeed 
in embroiling our country with foreign nations, we should buy 
our experience as dearly. No one class of institutions are adapted 
to all nations, any more than one suit of clothes will fit all men. 
The citizens of the United States owe their unexampled 
prosperity to peace and the policy of Washington. The same 
doctrine which forbids European powers from intermeddling in 
our affairs is of equal weight to prevent us from intervening in 
theirs. Our sympathies should be limited to our hospitality. 
If we pledge ourselves to more than this, we run the risk, not so 
much from external assault as from internal demoralization, of 
destroying all freedom. There is higher authority for this doc- 
trine in the divine parable of the beam and mote. Assuredly 
there is still scope enough within the United States for the em- 
ployment of the entire moral energies of the nation in self-reform. 
We have our own abuses, weaknesses, and, greater than all, the 
tide of European emigration, to correct and purify. While we 
seek to proselyte abroad, we are in danger of losing our own 
faith at home. There is but one safe and honorable course for 
Americans. To cherish their own institutions, and leave to 
their neighbors the task of reforming their own. Example will 
be of more weight than armed men. The one has a moral 
force ; the other is mere muscle ; the greatest tenacity wins the 
day. I came to Europe in all the flush of republican enthusiasm. 
I write from it with deeper and wiser attachment to its princi- 
ples. If I have succeeded in making a single one of my fellow 
citizens at once more patriotic and more charitable, with a juster 
appreciation of the causes which make nations to differ, I shall 
feel that my experience has not been without its reward. 

THE END. ' 



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